Joan Baez is Calculating How Much She’s Willing to Risk

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Speaker 1 In all my whatever

Speaker 1 career, I've said that social change cannot happen until somebody is willing to take a risk. And I believe that.

Speaker 1 And I believe it's going to get scarier and scarier to take a risk.

Speaker 6 Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Best People podcast. Unfortunately for us, Best People doesn't begin to capture this week's guest because she's more than that.
She's an icon known the world over.

Speaker 6 Her lyrics are literally the words that have accompanied everything we associate in our country's history with justice and change and all things good, but she's part of our present moment as well.

Speaker 6 This week's guest on the Best People podcast is Joan Baez. Thank you so much for being here.
It's an honor.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 6 I love everything you've done, but I especially love everything you've said about this moment. And one thing that I changed immediately is I am never going to call anything unprecedented again.

Speaker 6 You stopped me in my tracks when I read that. And I want to go back and take that word out of everything I've ever said about

Speaker 6 this administration. Will you explain, though, why that is no good?

Speaker 1 Unprecedented? Well, because that group of people would love to be unprecedented. I mean, at every conference, that's a next

Speaker 1 wave of horrors is unprecedented. So get used to it and drop the word.
We shouldn't be surprised by it anymore.

Speaker 6 Yeah, there's this piece of the Trump story that we as journalists still don't know how to tell. And it's this openness, I think, we have to new information when there are no new Trump stories.

Speaker 6 It's corruption, right? I mean, it's, and it's so, it's, it's, it's on us, but I, I wonder being on the front lines with people fighting for

Speaker 6 justice and for freedom, what it feels like to watch the country do this again.

Speaker 1 Well, I was thinking of writing, it was the worst of times and it was the worst of times, you know, couldn't have dreamed it up, Nicole. Nobody could have imagined it.

Speaker 6 What is it about this moment that

Speaker 1 puts

Speaker 6 us at such odds with the people leading us in terms of how we view fellow humans?

Speaker 1 I don't think anybody can figure that out really, because it's so extreme. It is so extreme.

Speaker 1 There are two tracks and for whatever it is, we can't cross over. And I'm guilty of that.
I don't want to hear that rhetoric. I don't want to listen to it.
I don't want to try and communicate with it.

Speaker 1 It's all very anti-Quaker. I was raised as a Quaker, and you really are supposed to be open and loving to everybody.
And I am having trouble with that right now.

Speaker 6 I'm from Northern California. I went to UC Berkeley and I

Speaker 6 am starting to feel like maybe I'll end up back there because I wonder how so many people voted for this.

Speaker 6 Do you think about that?

Speaker 1 Well, I... I'm concerned about my position as a,

Speaker 1 you know, some privileged, not quite white, but a privileged person, you know, and the temptation to just get the hell out and go somewhere that's safer than this.

Speaker 1 And then I think probably it isn't right to do. I'd rather for the moment stay here and try to take care of my gardeners,

Speaker 1 you know, because they wouldn't have the opportunity to go someplace else.

Speaker 6 I think I used to worry that it was hyperbolic to ask questions about safety, but they seem to revel in people feeling unsafe.

Speaker 6 I mean, using that as a political tool is how that side has used the question of crime. And now it feels like

Speaker 6 threatening protest and dissent is one of their tactics. And I would thought it was, you know, you've been arrested twice in your life, but you've warned about protesting being more dangerous now.

Speaker 1 Talk about that.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 you know, I went to jail twice and it was all for for aiding and abetting draft resistance. But, you know, we had our lawyers, we had to call, we had the families come visit.
We had a medication.

Speaker 1 And right now, since the first order of the day for this group is cruelty.

Speaker 1 It's cruelty. And don't just put people in cages.
You love putting people in cages. And that's what makes it scary in a way that I was not scared back then.

Speaker 1 I mean, there'd been a lot of places where I should have been scared and I was just maybe too stupid, you know, but now it's a different kind of scared.

Speaker 6 i don't know what to say to people but it's really honest to say that there's not i haven't experienced anything like this in my life you've been at the protests you're at the no kings protest you've talked about what you will protest for and who you will protest with and it always is non-violence do you see this moment as worse than the 60s this is worse I certainly see it as worse.

Speaker 1 I wish it weren't. I mean,

Speaker 1 I wish I could say, oh, yeah, we, you know, we did our work back then. We had some results.
This, it's the same or it's not as bad. But for me, if you really can't imagine,

Speaker 1 wouldn't have imagined this back then. If somebody made this, you know, this weird sci-fi movie, this was happening, we couldn't have dreamed it up.

Speaker 6 What do you think?

Speaker 6 we're missing then in terms of response because if this is worse i mean i i went back and watched i watched your performances at the March on Washington in 1963.

Speaker 6 We shall overcome

Speaker 6 one

Speaker 6 day

Speaker 6 Your voice, I mean, I have always associated with everything I've ever seen from that day, but everyone was singing with you, and it doesn't feel like we're all singing together right now.

Speaker 1 Well, you know, I have some theories about that. I don't know what happens when the stars align themselves in a certain way, and we have a movement, that kind of a movement.

Speaker 1 There was an anti-war movement, there was a civil rights movement, and by the end, they were merging.

Speaker 1 But that feeling of togetherness, I remember a kid was about 16 years old, some number of years after the war was over, and that he said, you know, you guys had everything back then.

Speaker 1 You had the music, you had the war, you know, this thing, you had Woodstock, you had each other. He said, you had the glue.

Speaker 1 And we don't have the glue. And I think that people were able to experience that when Obama was running for president.

Speaker 1 When he was running and people were high-fiving each other in the subway, people I didn't know. It was just that.
That was the feeling. And we can do this together.
I don't know how you create it.

Speaker 1 I don't know how much of it kind of just happens.

Speaker 1 But I think, you know, it will exist somewhere if we're around that long. And it's that vital glue.
And then we feel as though something's possible, whether it is or not.

Speaker 6 I mean, I think that's the anatomy of the resistance. It's, it's feeling together and being each other's glue, because that's the strength.

Speaker 6 And then it's, it's, I mean, both those moments were around extraordinary leaders.

Speaker 6 And I wonder, I've seen some of your comments about the Democratic leaders right now. I mean, there are so many talented ones individually.

Speaker 6 Why do you think they've struggled to knit us together as the glue behind them?

Speaker 1 I don't know. All I can say is that right now,

Speaker 1 we shouldn't be too surprised when people we thought were going to speak up for us don't, because there's a lot of fear now.

Speaker 1 I mean, we start self-censoring because of the clamping down on anything, on everything, on literature, on Anne Frank, you know,

Speaker 1 and especially if I'm taking jabs at all of them.

Speaker 1 A couple of things that I say that I think make some sense. And one is we may not be able to turn the tide, but we can certainly save some fishes.

Speaker 1 The other thing I have said,

Speaker 1 and I think it's true, is denial is your friend right now. And I would suggest that we all live about 85% of the time in denial, because otherwise we'll, you know, get extremely depressed.

Speaker 1 So, and then with the other 10% or 15%, go and do something.

Speaker 1 And when you feel as though, well, I can't do anything, it's not enough, it's not enough, may not be enough for you, but it's certainly enough for the little fish that you're advocating for or trying to take care of.

Speaker 1 It means, could mean everything to their life. So, I wouldn't moan about it's just me, I can't, you know, I'm the only one, it won't be good enough, do it anyway.
No, just do it anyway.

Speaker 1 What calls you the strongest, whether it's, you know, immigrants, constitution, whatever, just find the place and go do, to go be active with it.

Speaker 6 One other thing you said that I've quoted a bunch of times,

Speaker 6 you quote the writer Ann Patchett, who I adore, saying that hope is a muscle. I think, is that right? Yeah.
And that it's not just this thing that, you know, oh, let me just call up my hope.

Speaker 6 It is a thing we have to, right? We have to strengthen. And it sounds like all those things you describe strengthen our hope muscles.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because I don't, you know, I've gone through most of my life being a complete pessimist. And people say, oh, Miss Wyatt, how do you stay being such an optimist?

Speaker 1 I don't want to say, no, my glasses have to empty all the time because I do this stuff anyway, you know, that doesn't get me off the hook. I have to do what I do anyway.

Speaker 1 And it's up to me how grim I'm going to feel.

Speaker 6 So, so I said to me, how do you not, you know, lose your, you know, aren't you at your wit's end? And I said, yeah, I'm past that.

Speaker 6 I mean, I'm, I'm just here anyway, because we just, you know, we, we do what we can do with or without our wits.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Let's assuming we have any.

Speaker 6 We had any to lose.

Speaker 1 You're thinking big.

Speaker 6 Is it weird to see your life, you know, sort of replay to a new generation in film?

Speaker 1 I know I read in interviews that you saw it.

Speaker 6 I, I resisted watching it because I was such a fan that I felt disloyal watching the new people.

Speaker 6 And then after the election, I actually watched it and I said, oh, I'm so glad I watched it. I became obsessed with it.
I watched it three times. And I thought, oh, we have to follow the artists.

Speaker 6 The artists are going to lead us out.

Speaker 6 And I thought it was so important that a new generation, especially in the fall last year, could see it and maybe live it through the actors that played both of you.

Speaker 1 Well, it certainly gave my visibility a big boost. I had called them and said, Is there any, you want to talk to me? I, you know, I kind of was there.
And so I talked to different people.

Speaker 1 I talked with Pete Seeger and told, I mean, I have great stories. You know, I told him how Pete Seeger uses a banjo to protect himself.
So all these fun things actually came out in the movie.

Speaker 1 Not, I mean, you could see him holding his, I said his banjo is there. And you say, good morning, Pete.
And he'd say, I met a man in Guatemala. And you couldn't just say, good morning.

Speaker 1 Is that just a creative, you know, quirk or what was that? I think he didn't know how to relate to a human being. So that's how it came.

Speaker 1 Thank God we wouldn't have had that great music if he didn't have that quirk, you know.

Speaker 6 But what is it about art and artists that

Speaker 6 is it that we cling to it so desperately at these moments, or is it that the art itself is inspired by desperate moments?

Speaker 1 Well, let's see. It's certainly inspired by desperate moments.
I think it's also inspired periodically by beauty.

Speaker 1 I think that music is, I used to think it was the only thing that crossed all barriers and borders. And then I was working with Merce de Sosa, brilliant and powerful singer.

Speaker 1 And I was telling her that I said, the only thing that really crosses borders is music. She said, it's music and food.

Speaker 1 Yes. So I was.

Speaker 6 Do you have the same creative process as you write poetry that you did when you've written music? Does it all come from the same place?

Speaker 1 I think it kind of shifts around in there because when I stop singing, stop writing songs, it's as though somebody said, okay, and they waved a little flag next.

Speaker 1 With painting, I painted for, I think, 12 years. And then two or three years ago, I just stopped.
It doesn't mean I won't do it again, you know? But then there's all this other stuff.

Speaker 1 And then I'm thinking you have footage of it. I joined the circus.
circus.

Speaker 1 And I joined the circus for a number of reasons. One is I'm able to dance,

Speaker 1 which I wanted to do my whole career, but nobody understood that. So I stood in front of a microphone for 60 years.
So now I'm busting at the seams and I get to dance in this circus.

Speaker 1 It's also for that denial that I need that denial. I'm not going to be able to function.
And also because the circus represents and is everything the administration hates.

Speaker 1 You know, we've got drag, we've got strip, we've got pole dancers, we've got me,

Speaker 1 and it's, and we've got joy, we've got dancing, we've got laughter. And so it is a real refuge for me.
And it's interesting, the audience is like, oh, you know, that everybody's waiting for that too.

Speaker 1 So I'm happy to be part of everybody's denial

Speaker 1 for a little bit here.

Speaker 6 I think denial, though, is an, I mean, one woman's denial is another's compartmentalization, right? It's the thing, right? Like it lets, it lets a lot of people function.

Speaker 6 I think all sorts of people are compartmentalizing. I mean, I think that's my denial that I want to believe that nobody wanted this.

Speaker 6 I want to believe the polls that say that, and I know Trump voters in California, I'm from California.

Speaker 6 And I'll ask them, are you worried about all of your friends who are here illegally or whose families or parents are, will be deported? And they have the

Speaker 6 denial explains a lot of the Trump voters that I know at least that, oh, he won't do those things. See, that's just talk.
He won't deport my friend.

Speaker 6 He won't deport my friend because he's a hardworking American. He's contributing.
But the truth of what he's doing is really obliterates all of that denial.

Speaker 6 He's doing everything he said he would do and so much more.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was the worst of times. It was the worst of times.

Speaker 6 It was the worst of times. Go join a circus.
It was the worst of times. Go join a circus.
I think that that belongs on a t-shirt.

Speaker 1 Thank you. I like this.
I love it.

Speaker 6 I'll make it. I'll send it to you.

Speaker 6 We are going to sneak in a quick break right here when we come back. Much more with legendary folk singer, activist, icon Joan Baez.
Stay right here.

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Speaker 6 I want to ask about

Speaker 6 that experience of being

Speaker 6 in

Speaker 6 community with everyone that comes to watch the circus, right? Because that feels like the through line. They're the people that you weren't just performing to people.

Speaker 6 They were in community with you. And your songs are so iconic and famous and successful that I cannot find any footage where people aren't singing.

Speaker 6 But what is that through line about? That you don't have fans that sit silently and idly to watch you. You sit in community with your fans.

Speaker 6 They are in that moment with you.

Speaker 1 The circus is traditionally non-apolitical, apolitical. But I intend to say there's a quote from Mark Twain who says, The people have only one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

Speaker 1 That's an amazing quote.

Speaker 6 It's so perfect forever, but especially now. And I think I like the things that are always right, but that I can grab onto.
I cried watching all of the footage from 1963.

Speaker 6 And I didn't just cry because I was so moved by you and everyone that was together. I cried because I'm so desperate for the glue.

Speaker 6 And I wonder if we're not going to see the glue in our politics, maybe we'll find it in the comedy. But I think Trump's on to them too.
I feel like they're in danger too. So what does that mean?

Speaker 1 Yeah. It means I'm scared.
I mean, I look at this lovely people

Speaker 1 in the circus and I think, oh, God, I mean,

Speaker 1 they're Latinos, there's drag, there's all that stuff, and all of it.

Speaker 1 I think this engine that is rolling now is absolutely terrifying.

Speaker 1 I mean, I did Amnesty International and human rights work in Chile and Argentina and Brazil and Czechoslovakia, all the places that have been through military dictatorship.

Speaker 1 And that's what we're heading for. We're all, you know, like almost there.

Speaker 6 Are you scared for yourself?

Speaker 1 Yes, yes. I'm more scared for my kid and granddaughter.
And I ask people, what do you say to your kids and your grandchildren? They say nothing.

Speaker 1 Because why take away that dream at the moment when she's just, you know, effervescent with the possibilities in her life? And there isn't any point in me trying to argue that away.

Speaker 1 If it comes to that, she'll figure it out on her own.

Speaker 6 I have two kids and I keep thinking maybe they will

Speaker 6 eradicate measles a second time. You know, maybe they'll become doctors or health workers here.
Maybe they will,

Speaker 6 you know, I grew up when Americans went and taught other countries how to do democracy. You know, maybe they will be the people that teach us how to do it here.

Speaker 1 That's how I feel about my granddaughter. Yeah.
Right? It certainly, yeah. I mean, we can't really.
We're doing everything we can, but the big walloping

Speaker 1 glue change is really going to come from another generation, I think.

Speaker 6 What is the need for a new anthem? And I know you have a new One in a Million is the new song, right?

Speaker 1 Well, there are two of them. The other one is, I think you probably saw me

Speaker 1 at a demonstration. It's I Carried the Flame.

Speaker 1 I carry the flame,

Speaker 1 I carry the flame.

Speaker 1 Let always be sad when you speak of my name.

Speaker 1 I carry the flame.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 1 I carry the flame. Let it always be said when you call out my name.
I carry the flame. I mean, We Shall Overcome is the most beautiful protest song in my mind has ever written.

Speaker 1 And we need something new.

Speaker 1 Because it's so easy. But because it's easy to write everybody off, they say, oh, yeah, they did that about 50 years ago.
That's done.

Speaker 1 It's too full of nostalgia and not enough to get people moving in my mind. Not everybody agrees with that.

Speaker 6 I mean, I saw you compliment Bruce Springsteen for using his platform for good.

Speaker 6 He's about as big as it gets.

Speaker 6 Do you think fear explains why people sort of underneath? And Dave Matthews is using his platform every time he speaks. There's a handful, but you can count it on one hand.

Speaker 6 It doesn't feel like the solidarity and the association that music had with the fight for rights and peace and freedom.

Speaker 1 And a lot of the, a lot of, I mean, the, the live aid sort of structure,

Speaker 1 I used to tease about it because I'd say

Speaker 1 the only risk about live aid was to not get asked.

Speaker 1 It wasn't to be snapped.

Speaker 1 You're not exactly putting your life on the line there, you know?

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 1 That's always a question of how deeply somebody is involved.

Speaker 1 Like Pete Seeger was all the way, you know, he's six foot foot four and it was already in it over his head and then others you know a couple of them i won't name names but one of them really good person

Speaker 1 multi-millionaire back then and always would say i really want to do something i really want to do something i want to take a risk this year

Speaker 1 and he never did

Speaker 1 you know it's too scary too scared all right i mean i don't know i've never had that kind of money but probably when you get in that echelon you're afraid of losing any of it, I think.

Speaker 6 Like, I wonder what's happening.

Speaker 6 And I'm an ex-Republican, and I don't understand why businesses don't think they have a skin in the game of remaining a democracy.

Speaker 6 There is no autocracy in the world where the economy is thriving, none. And so I think if I hadn't arrived at where I've arrived as an ex-Republican, I might not even be curious about this.

Speaker 6 But I'm curious why everyone thinks someone else will save our country from becoming something other than a democracy

Speaker 1 well the first thing coming to my mind is a young one of one of um elon musk's little puppet people on tv saying we got to get over this dictator phobia

Speaker 1 so that's one pocket you know that's one pocket and it's what's really evolving now people are getting over their dictator or they didn't even know what it was and they won't I mean, if you're neutral during this time, you can get away, get away with your life doing pretty much what you want to do.

Speaker 1 Just don't cross any lines.

Speaker 6 But what's the bet that you won't have a kid that tweets something that offends someone associated with the party in power, that you won't have an employee who has a relative who, I mean, they're all different.

Speaker 1 I mean, they're all of the above that you just said, and the self-censorship. Don't let me get too grim because it's not health.
It's not healthy for everybody. It's not good for anybody.

Speaker 6 So how do you beef up then the hope muscles?

Speaker 6 What do we need? What do we do? How do we juice up the other side of the equation where we think that

Speaker 6 something will glue us together, a leader will emerge and we will be in this fight in time to save this country we love?

Speaker 1 All I can say is how I stay afloat. I have a friend, a Turkish friend, close friend.
She's been living in a dictatorship forever now.

Speaker 1 And she had

Speaker 1 the only progressive newspaper that still existed as time went by. And I called her the other day.
I said, help.

Speaker 1 And I said, I said, why are you not in jail? She said, because I'm very clever.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm not that clever. But she has walked that line.
But she's.

Speaker 1 She gets very depressed, you know, because Turkey is this wonderful place and it's been diminished one thing after another.

Speaker 1 But it remains to be seen if I can be very clever.

Speaker 6 I think it's a good bat that you can be very clever. What do you listen to? Do you still immerse yourself in music? Are there new artists that you're drawn to?

Speaker 1 You know, it depends on what I want to do that day. This morning, I wanted to dance a little in the morning and I put on Jimmy Cliff.
Nice.

Speaker 1 Of course, he is so heartbreaking to me because it's so beautiful in a certain way. So I danced to that.
And then, let's see, I had on Renee Fleming the other day. Beautiful.

Speaker 1 Because it's so beautiful, so beautiful.

Speaker 1 I put her on periodically. I listened to the Gypsy Kings.
Somebody said, oh, the old Gypsy Kings. I said, yeah, the old Gypsy Kings.
They're the best of that music for me.

Speaker 1 I have a dance group online once a week, and we just do salsa. I love it.
And

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 6 My daughter likes this kid's band called The Wiggles. And the best member is a former salsa dancer.
And they just move. I mean, salsa is so sexy.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it is.

Speaker 6 What is the answer for a society in the arts? I mean, what is the best argument for saving the arts if you want to save a society? To me, this is one of the distinctions.

Speaker 6 this time that that that side is is pursuing the arts that they know that too yeah that they're pursuing the kennedy center yeah what are the bright spots i mean a lot of artists said no i will not perform there for him as sort of you know puppets for the state or artists for the state.

Speaker 6 Do you see some, you know, like pulse and signs of life and things that give you hope in the arts? I mean, because our artists are uncompromising. Most artists start out dirt poor.

Speaker 6 And if they don't become famous, it is their art that sustains them. Many,

Speaker 6 are you, are you seeing some things that inspire you from other artists?

Speaker 1 Aside from Bruce Spring scene,

Speaker 1 I think, you know, I think I'm not waiting for somebody to be political. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think I have to do receiving the beauty of the art, like Brene, but it just to me right now, it has to be the beauty and the laughter and the joy and the dancing.

Speaker 1 So, you know, when I can support that or be that,

Speaker 1 then I do. I guess part of it is I don't wait for much

Speaker 1 because it may not happen.

Speaker 6 And you said that these acts of joy are their own acts of defiance. So you talked about being at a drag show in Miami.
Talk about that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 This great dragon breakfast in Miami. And I started dancing with one of them.
She was huge. So I was just, I'm about the size of a peanut now.

Speaker 1 So I look really tiny, but I was doing this great dancing where then she kind of said, like, you know, you go dance.

Speaker 1 So I went dancing along the thoroughfare, all these tables. People started stuffing dollar bills in my,

Speaker 1 you know, in my belt. I thought, you know,

Speaker 1 this is what it should be. Totally spontaneous and totally dirty.
You know,

Speaker 1 I had one friend who was so horrified. She said, What's this going to mean to Jasmine? My granddaughter.
Well, Jasmine was the one who got me there.

Speaker 1 And then I talked to one of my clever past therapists. She said, Oh, you let your inner slut out.

Speaker 1 Congratulations.

Speaker 6 I mean, that's all that anyone wants to see is Joan Baez's inner slut.

Speaker 1 I was happy watching it.

Speaker 6 My conversation with Joan Baez continues right after the break. Stay with us.

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Speaker 6 What is it like to have so many people know of you, but I imagine you don't want everyone to know the real you? What is it like to have been to be famous for so long?

Speaker 1 Well, you know, what comes to my mind first is that

Speaker 1 there's been more of the real me dancing in the circus than a sense. Then there's a real me who does politics.
There's a real me who does the art. There's a real me who sings.

Speaker 1 There was another story. There's a German medium.
Somebody says, you got to talk to this guy. So I met him and I gave him all the appropriate, you know, whatever he needs to do his work.

Speaker 1 And he came to a concert. And after the concert, he brought this big chart out, you know.
So he's holding the chart and he says.

Speaker 1 And then I look into the chart to see more about you, but the energy hit me in the face. So I went in the sideways and I looked that way.

Speaker 1 And then he says, I know this, that you were put on the earth to sing, put on the earth to do activism, put on the earth to, there was another one.

Speaker 1 He said, but the real reason you're put on the earth is to dance.

Speaker 1 Wow. And I love that.
That's when I'm happiest. Well, I think I really want to say, you who guys, you know, I do this too, and I get a chance to do that.
I'm 80 fucking four years old.

Speaker 1 It was never too late.

Speaker 6 I love that so much. I just, I'm sitting here thinking, how do I bottle her up?

Speaker 1 Like, how do we bottle you up?

Speaker 1 I don't know. Come to the circus.

Speaker 6 What is your advice for living an open life, right? Where you're still open, you're still asking the medium, you know, what does the chart say?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I don't know how to live otherwise. know that I've always sometimes to a fault been open.
I wonder how much of that I was trying to get people to understand me, but people, but I couldn't.

Speaker 1 I mean, for those first years, I was busy having stage fright and being political, and I couldn't enjoy myself on stage.

Speaker 1 And then little by little, as years went by, and I had the appropriate therapy, I got more and more able to. to enjoy myself, to share the music and not worry about saving the world.

Speaker 6 What do you remember most about sort of

Speaker 6 the most famous moments of your life. I mean, do you remember what the weather was like and what it smelled like and what your day was like, the day that you sang? I think it's August of 1963.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was very hot. And everybody said, oh, Marlon Brando's here and he has a cattle prod.
I mean, it's something nobody's going to know about.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I think I think about the other times people don't know about, you know,

Speaker 1 in Czechoslovakia before the communists were overthrown. And I met one of the dissidents then who ended up being president.

Speaker 1 And that moment to me, where we were in a concert hall, national television was filming this whole thing. He was a dissident, wasn't supposed to be there.

Speaker 1 We'd gotten him up in the balcony so the police would have a hard time getting there. They turned the cameras off and they turned the sound off.
So I was stuck there and I sang swing low, which is a

Speaker 1 cappella to him.

Speaker 1 And then within the next few months,

Speaker 1 the communists had fallen in a non-violent revolution. And I was credited with being the last drop in that chalice

Speaker 1 before the revolution. That, to me, is one of the highlights of my life that people don't know as much about because mostly they see me in Dr.
King, which was wonderful

Speaker 1 being with him.

Speaker 6 So did you know in the moment that you're singing that, that you could be that, what you've become to history, to that country's history?

Speaker 1 You mean like Czechoslovakia in August?

Speaker 1 I think I was pretty young, really,

Speaker 1 comparatively speaking. And I think you can kind of tell when something is going to be historic, you know, like that.

Speaker 1 that march that day or flying over Woodstock and looking down thinking, oh my God, it's not an anthill. those are people

Speaker 1 things like that but one's own importance

Speaker 1 is hard to judge and better not to think about you know just do what you do to the best of your ability and try you know as a star try to avoid the pitfalls of that try to when somebody comes and talks to you realize how important it is for them to tell their story.

Speaker 1 Although I had a great t-shirt somebody gave me saying, please don't tell me your story.

Speaker 1 I said, oh man, that's great. And he proceeded to tell me a story about how he got the t-shirt.

Speaker 6 When you're asked, though, to come and lift up a protest now, like No Kings or May Day or others, is that a burden? Or do you feel like there's something you can pass along to help?

Speaker 6 the activist movements today. Like, how do you carry that when people so desperately want you to to be part of this movement now?

Speaker 1 Well, sometimes I just show up because I know that that is heartening to them. I mean, I hear it when they're passing

Speaker 1 each person, it seems, you know, above a certain age, that it has meant something to them. And for that, I'll just be there.

Speaker 1 And we had a wonderful one that went 17 miles along not the highway, but close to a highway. And

Speaker 1 it's magnificent when that's there and that's happening and it's part of what needs to happen.

Speaker 6 I mean, to your point of showing up and not knowing what the drop will be, I'm not someone who thinks that none of it matters in this moment. I feel like it all matters.
Everything matters.

Speaker 6 I agree with you.

Speaker 1 Because you don't know. I absolutely agree.
Yeah. I totally agree with that, that it all matters.
I'm not there visually. the way I have been in the past.
No, I'm at the circus.

Speaker 1 Maybe one of the marches going on, I'll take the circus.

Speaker 1 But yeah, when I come home, so I'm pretty cranked up after two nights of performances.

Speaker 1 Then there's this time.

Speaker 1 And I look at my roses

Speaker 1 and I

Speaker 1 force myself

Speaker 1 to roses level and do the things around the house to keep me there. And I'm learning how to do nothing, which I worked on for 80 years.

Speaker 1 It's hard for me because I'm on output all the time.

Speaker 6 I can't picture it. What does doing nothing look like?

Speaker 1 Well, let's see. A couple of days ago, I

Speaker 1 sat on a couch and I read some Atlantic.

Speaker 6 Good.

Speaker 1 I love them.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I didn't go in the art studio and I didn't start writing poetry. Those are the big ones because those are where I go immediately.

Speaker 1 So, yeah. And, you know, I have a pool.
More important, I have a creek. And it's just my life down there.
It's barely walkable. I might have to get fucking ski poles, which I hate.

Speaker 1 They look like some ancient bird washer, you know.

Speaker 1 So I'm going down the creek with these things slipping and sliding on the rocks. But the creek, it totally revives me.
It's like a little baptism every time I go. And I like incense.

Speaker 1 I like so much incense, they can smell it miles down the creek.

Speaker 1 Just trying to, you know, revive. And there are a couple of places still, they're high enough and it's coming strongly enough that I can just do a little breaststroke.
And

Speaker 1 it's important.

Speaker 6 Do you feel like you're in the, I don't give a fuck what anybody thinks about me, years of your life?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's the luxury of this. Yeah.
You know, being my age and I don't care.

Speaker 6 You know, I just watched the documentary about the Ed Sullivan show on Netflix and, of course, knew who Ed Sullivan was, but I didn't know about how personally involved he was in bringing all the acts that he saw and loved in Harlem to the airwaves of CBS and fighting for them.

Speaker 6 If anyone tried to censor them or boycott him, you know, I think a lot about the privilege and the responsibility of having a platform, albeit, you know, just in news, right? I mean,

Speaker 6 what is the importance of taking risks if you can and if you believe?

Speaker 1 And all my whatever

Speaker 1 career, I've said that social change cannot happen until somebody is willing to take a risk. And I believe that.

Speaker 1 And I believe it's going to get scarier and scarier to take a risk.

Speaker 1 Those are things I have to figure out about risk because I've always been willing to take it.

Speaker 1 You know, does my

Speaker 1 taking a risk, you know, it's affect my son, my granddaughter,

Speaker 1 and so on. I would love to say, you know, damn it, you know, damn the torpedoes, I'll do whatever I want to do.

Speaker 1 And it's very stifling to me to not be able to just say that because that's where my heart is.

Speaker 6 Are you optimistic in this moment that enough people will at least stand together and find community and be glue for each other for whatever comes to pass?

Speaker 1 I think that Gluing and finding each other is really, really important.

Speaker 1 And I also adhere to that.

Speaker 1 We may not be able to turn the tide, but we can save some fishes to get involved in those organizations and groups that are busy saving fishes, whatever the group is, back it up.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm not going to say, I mean, back in the day,

Speaker 1 I would say to students, college students, yeah, quit, you know, go get involved in real life and think it was right to say back then. And now it's a little scary.

Speaker 6 But we can, but we can save the fish.

Speaker 1 But you can save the fish. Bunch of them.

Speaker 6 Joan Baez, it's a privilege and an honor to get to talk to you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 It's my privilege. Thanks, Nicole.

Speaker 6 Thank you so much for listening to the best people. Be sure to subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts to get this and other MSNBC podcasts ad-free.

Speaker 6 As a subscriber, you get early access and exclusive bonus content. All episodes of the podcast are also available on YouTube.
Visit msnbc.com slash the bestpeople to watch.

Speaker 6 This episode of The Best People was produced by Frannie Kelly, Vicki Vergalina, and senior producer Lisa Ferry with production support from Delia Hayes and Ann Gimbal.

Speaker 6 Our audio engineer is Bob Mallory and Bryson Barnes is the head of audio production. Pat Berkey is the senior executive producer of Deadline White House.

Speaker 6 Brad Gold is the executive producer of Content Strategy. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of audio, and Madeleine Herringer is the senior VP in charge of audio, digital, and long form.

Speaker 6 Search for the best people wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to follow the series.

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