Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast - Matthew Broderick

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

Matthew Broderick has been celebrated for the iconic characters he’s played on stage and on screen. In this episode, he talks about what it was like to grow up in New York City with a family of artists, and how he prefers to eat when he’s on the road for different roles. He shares fond memories of the housekeeper who helped raise him and her recipe for ratatouille that he cherishes to this day.Matthew Broderick is a two-time Tony award-winning actor best known for his iconic portrayal of the charismatic Ferris Bueller in the 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. His acting career began on Broadway when he was just 17, and since then, he has gotten recognition for his stage roles in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Brighton Beach Memoirs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

She is chasing me either with a knife or a scissors threatening to castrate me is what I would say is the actual event. And it's very hard for me to explain that in a way that doesn't sound like a sad abuse, but it was not. I swear to God. I think everybody was laughing. I know it became a story that was never told as anything more than fun, help funny. Welcome to your Mama's Kitchen, the podcast that explores how we're shaped as adults by the kitchens and some of the zany things we ate as kids. I'm Michele Norris. For generations of Americans, Matthew Broderick will forever be known as Ferris Bueller, the lovable slacker who inspired countless teens to play hooky and skip school since his film Ferris Bueller's Day Off was released in 1986.

But Matthew Broderick's career is so much wider than that, it spawned decades, both on stage and on screen. He began his career on Broadway when he was still in his teens, and he's a two-time Tony award winner, known for his roles and how to succeed in business without really trying, and the producers and so much more. He's appeared in a slew of popular films, including war games, the freshman, glory, election, and the remake of the Stefford wives. And he's a prolific voice actor and animation too. Yes, that was his voice as Symba

in the Lion King and all those sequels. Most recently, he returned to the stage with his wife, Sarah Jessica Parker. They starred alongside one another in the Broadway production of Neil Simon's Classic, Plaza Suite. Matthew was born and raised in New York City in a household of artists. In Matthew Browder's family, the kitchen was where things happened. It was where friends gathered to read plays at the dinner table.

It's where family dramas of the unscripted variety played out with intensity and the atrix. In this episode, we learn how that little kitchen in his fifth floor apartment in New York City has shaped Matthew Broderick as a man and as an actor. We will serve up all that and more. Matthew Broderick, I'm so glad to talk to you. Thanks so much for making time for us. Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.

This is a podcast that usually begins with an interesting question. We talk to people about the ways they are influenced by the food they ate as a young person by the places where it was prepared or procured. You lived in New York all your life, right? Yeah, Greenwich Village. I was born on ninth street and moved down to Waverly, which is really seventh street. So I migrated two blocks when I was about four. Well, let's talk about where you grew up. What do you remember about that kitchen?

What did it look like? That kitchen? Yeah, the kitchen that you... Well, I don't know. Would you remember the first or the second one? When you think about your childhood kitchen, which one do you remember? What did it look like? The second one. The first one I left when I was't know. Would you remember the first or the second one? When you think about your childhood kitchen, which one do you remember? What did it look like? The second one, the first one I left when I was about four. So I, that was very small.

I do sort of remember it. I had a cookie jar that I remember and a radio, but I don't remember it so well. The one I really grew up in was on Washington Square North on the fifth floor and in a very old apartment building. And the kitchen was in the back, like the window faced an alley. And down the alley, you could see the Empire State Building perfectly framed in the middle of the alley, which is cool. It had a red linoleum floor around wooden table that you could eat in the kitchen. Tiles along one side of the kitchen, which I guess used to be like a old-fashioned stove. There was an outlet for a chimney there, but that was no longer. There was an old dumb waiter that didn't work. Very scary-looking dumb waiter in the corner. It was like a 19 turn

of the century, maybe, or a little later, you know, those cabinets with glass that had windows on them, but they've been painted so many times, you know, they look round, a sink, a stove, a refrigerator. That was pretty much it. And it was very active. A lot of people used it. And a little pantry next to it. That's for the fridge, you know, it's with a little closet. And eventually, when we got, when we were doing a little better, when I was

in my maybe 12 or so, we got a dishwasher, which was a huge improvement in our lives. And that was in the pantry. And then we had a big surface on top of that where we would prepare our motsup with peanut butter. Wait, whoa, Motsup with peanut butter? What? What were you doing? That just came to mind. There was always MOTSA for some reason, almost always. And there was always some Skippy peanut butter. So I do remember slavering that on to MOTSA after school. What was going on in the kitchen?

Was it just cooking or was it just a, was it also a place where people gathered? I think they gathered, definitely cooking, but also cards, my parents would play, it was a round table table in there so that's where my mom and dad would play cards at night with other another couple or friends would come over. So we'd be in bed or I'd be in bed and I could hear them talking and chatting was in the kitchen at the round table playing a canasta or something like that so there was a lot of activity at night in that kitchen too. And homework was done off and at that table, it really was the center of the family. I left out also. My parents did do play readings at the house with friends sometimes. Oh, that must have been fabulous. Yeah, yeah, it was really fun. And I got to read, usually, I'd read

a part and we would do, you know, the importance of being honest or something. Whatever anybody was thinking about, we would wait. This sounds fabulous. Wait a minute. It wasn't a play that someone was working on. It was just like, that's just a playoff. It's just a show. And let's let's do a table read.

It was really, really fun because inevitably we didn't have enough people or it wasn't all actors, you know. So you get to hear Charles Pratt, my mom's friend, very, very nervously read a part, you know. So you'd get to hear Charles Pratt, my mom's friend, very, very nervously read a part, you know, bright reds sweating, absolutely terrified. People just having to enter show business. So that was really fun and very charming. Like people were very good. People who were best at it in a way were ones who were not actors. Tell me about your parents. They were both in the business. My father was an actor and my mom had met my dad. She was a playwright when she was younger and she met him at acting school where she was studying playwriting and he was one of the actors. So he was from New Hampshire.

His father was a letter carrier. They grew up very different. My mom grew up near Park Avenue, pretty wealthy with her father, her mother died young, but her father was wealthy. I think that was all gone by the time I got there. But they got that apartment when I was four. I don't know how many parents had before that. I have two older sisters. Mm-hmm. So you're the baby of the family? I'm a baby. You. Was the kitchen a happy space for you? Mostly. Yes, very happy. That's an interesting answer. Well, serious discussions happen in the kitchen too.

You know, very serious. It was the center of everything. I remember my sister shaking a bottle of something like chocolate milk or something, and the lid came off and she sprayed chocolate milk all over the large kitchen wall. That was very dramatic. I was very little. Now, was that an accident or was she having a moment? She said it was an accident, but there were moments too, but this one was an accident. But oh my God, there were definitely moments. There were screaming fights in that kitchen too. What were you all fighting about? Well, your parents were actors. You were probably

very impressive. And I had teenage sisters, you know, did they torment you? Not so they were pit-old to me. They didn't torment me so much. No, but they tormented mom or she tormented them. But you know, the fights that happen between teens and their parents are can be pretty serious. You know, some families suppress everything. Don't talk about everything. Don't talk about anything. And some families talk about everything.

And that can lead to discomfort, but it also is a way to let a little pressure out of the pot. Yeah. So it doesn't mean that people aren't happy. They're just expressive. Yeah. I think for us, my mom was the expressive one and dad was pretty quiet.

So, you know, mom would be the one who would be yelling or lose her temper or walk out or very dramatic. And dad mostly quiet until he would boil over. So that's very scary in its way too, you know, a parent who's quiet and I'm not telling you that they're mad at you until they're too mad. You know, I'm a parent now myself, so I look at this much more sympathetically than when I was the kid. I know how hard it is, so I'm in no way criticizing my dad for that or my mom. But that's just how it was. She was like, she could get very mad at you and screaming and then 20 minutes later, you'd be playing jacks with her in the living room floor.

Like, it didn't hold a grudge, you know, it wasn't like that. Where dad would just be like, something is wrong with dad. What's wrong with dad? And it would take awhile until you would get some explanation. He was just in a mood, give him some space. Yeah. But in New York, it's hard to give people space. It's a flexible.

That's why my mom would leave the apartment every now and then, I'm leaving. And she would leave. But then you'd hear the buzzer, 45 minutes or so. The door from downstairs, buzzer. Well, so she didn't even take her keys or pocket books. She just, I'm out. No, that's a good point.

Because she didn't have keys if I heard the buzzer. But it could be a dramatic entrance. It could be. Yeah. I'm back. Fix your face. Get it right. Here I come.

Your parents were from different traditions, also, your mother's Jewish, your father's Catholic. Yep. How did that influence the things that were served in the kitchen, the culinary memories that you have? Yeah, well, they're very different on those two. And then what I'm leaving out also is our housekeeper, Sally McFall, huge influence in my life and raising me as much as my parents did actually. So I have three cooking, I have more than three, maybe I have my mom's kind of Jewish, she could make moths of all soup and chop liver and Jewish things, but she was also kind of a gourmet type. She read cookbooks a lot. She was always interested in cooking.

So she made sort of fancy things. My father made things, I guess from New Hampshire and from being an actor on the road a lot, a lot of them came out of a can, but he was very good at it. Like, he made delicious eggs, omelets, tuna salad, with a massive amounts of mayonnaise, and a, um, a few dishes that people made fun of, but people loved. So those two and then Sally, who was like, she could make southern food. That's all she made when she first came to our home like, you know, Lyma beans, collard greens, roast chickens, she cookook anything, coleslaw, carrot salad. But then she got very influenced by my mom and their cookbooks. So she was desperate to make a good possible, which I'm not sure she ever achieved, but her cooking got more

and more varied and really, really special. She made really good. This is too simple to be a recipe, but she broke off the ends of Asparagus. How you do to get the tough part off? And I'm sure a lot of people do this, but she peeled them about halfway up and then boiled

them in a pan for like four minutes really fast. So they're bright green, and just all of them lots of salt. And they were incredible. She had a way of things simple like that that were just perfect. You know, that is a protein. When you use the potato peeler

to take the outside of the asparagus off, because it's a entirely different flavor when you remove that sort of almost briny outer shell. Yeah, that's right. It becomes kind of nutty and it was absolutely perfect and easy to eat, you know, you're not getting the chewy fiber and. So was Sally a woman of color? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't want to guess. The clue was probably collard greens and lime beans, but oh, right Yeah. A salimic fall from North Carolina. Yeah. She lived in Brooklyn and came into the city and worked for us. Do you know if she's still alive? Have you kept in touch with her? No. Yeah. We did keep in touch and she's not alive. She lived

into her nineties though. And I never ever lost touch with her. Even after I grew up and had my own life, she would come over once a week in cook. After that, she would just come and hang around. Well, you know, she got a little too old to cook and she still come when my son was very little. She was always just, always around. I never sat in her. Does she influence you in some way? Is there some piece of her that lives inside of you?

I think so. I'm sure. I mean, definitely with food. Absolute love. And humor. She was funny and she could tease you when you're little and get you very frantically upset. I don't know what would she tease you about. She might tease you as a child, but what would you do?

Well, not bad. You know, there's some story when I was little of her chasing me with a knife, laughing, saying, I'm going to cut it off. I'm going to cut it off. What it is, I'll leave for the listeners. So it's hard to, that became legendary in our house. What precipitated that? I really don't remember. It was with humor. I want to make that very clear. We were both laughing. And the parents around when this was happening. No, they came home into it, I think.

That's why it became kind of a famous story. Wait, you have to back up. What would describe what was happening? She is chasing me either with a knife or a scissors threatening to castrate me is what I would say is the actual event And it's very hard for me to explain that in a way that But it was not I swear to God. I think everybody was laughing I know it became a story that was never told as anything more than fun. Oh funny

But she was she was a great person. I miss her. She was just very curious about everything. New foods, she liked to draw anything new. She wanted to hear about my children. She wanted them to tell about their lives. She was very, very curious about everything. She must have been very proud of you. I think she was. Yeah, she, uh, when I did a show, she'd always come, even when she was quite elderly, you know, and it was hard for her to get in and get to the seat and everything, but she still always did it. You're listening to The Audible original, your mom is kitchen. Like what you're hearing, the next episode is available now, exclusively from Audible.

You can listen to new episodes on Audible two weeks before you can hear them anywhere else. So we know that athletes learn how to eat when they're training for a big match or a big race, but how do actors learn how to eat when they have a big run of shows on Broadway? It took some time for Matthew Broderick to understand how much his father shaped the way he himself ordered his steps as an actor and how so much of that influence spring from the memories inside that tight little kitchen where the Broderick and how so much of that influence spring from the memories inside that tight little kitchen where the broader family spent so much of their time.

I want to go back to the kitchen if I could, because your parents were both in the business. And I wonder if they taught you how to eat well as an actor. If there's certain things that you have to do to maintain stamina, to protect your voice, I'm wondering about like a Broadway diet because of the tempo of the day. You're many times doing two shows a day. You probably finish late at night. You're ravenous, but if you eat too much, then you don't sleep and then you have bad dreams and then you

have puffy under your eyes and then how do you eat for the work that you do and did you learn that from your folks? I don't know that I learned what to eat so much, except I can learn what to eat because of what they liked and I liked that. My dad, who had been on the road a lot, he was like, you need a cast iron pan, chef's knife. He had a box.

He traveled with that? Yeah, he always had it ready so he didn't have to like put it together. You know, a frying pan, some kind of pot to boil things and a spatula, you know, a wooden spoon. He liked to feed himself, you know, he didn't like to always eat out or anything. He liked to be self-sufficient and he had it down to a science. I try to emulate that. When you take on a role, you have the backs of stuff that you bring. Well, pretty often I'll rent a place that already has it because I'm not as broke as he was, but his organization and his ability to feed himself on the road definitely rubbed

off on me. I'm very into that. You know, if I'm going to be somewhere for two months, I'm going to have stuff in my refrigerator, stuff to cook it in. I do not like to constantly go to the diner on the corner or room service or any of that. I really like to feed myself. And I think I got that from my dad. So you're a cook? I am a bit of a cook, yeah. I've heard that about you that you actually

cook quite well. I enjoy it. You know, I get better. I love it. My wife's a good cook, too. So we like to cook. kids too or starting to cook. And the Broadway or stage eating is really difficult, particularly as I get older, like eating a big meal at 11.30 at night and a martini when you're 21, 22, you can do that. You get away and then you sleep until noon and then you pop out of bed and you know, you're fantastic in your play and everything's fine. But for an adult, it's like nothing worse than eating a big meal that late, everything's messed up. And also you don't want to be full before a play.

So you have to eat at say five for a night of clock show. So now you're definitely going to be, if you're me starving after that show. So so you have to going to be, if you're me starving after that show. So, so you have to eat after the play. Then I have to stay up late because I can't go to sleep full or also with all out of adrenaline. So a play requires you to turn into a two in the morning, three in the morning person, if you're me. And that's very hard with a family. So a place are really kind of a pain when you get older and have a family. So when you eat at 11 o'clock, what do you make yourself? That I might be out with friends because what I've not gotten good at,

which I would like to get good at, is to finish a play, run home, and start to decompress. If somebody's come to the show, I'll go out with them. I tend to want to be with people and be told how great I was for about a 45 minutes. And I go home. So, uh, your dad must have been some kind of cook. If he traveled, when he went to work on the road with a box with his own skillet and spatula and wooden spoon. So is there a recipe from his repertoire that you would like to share with us also? Yes. Now, I want to preface this. He could make very good omelets and

steak. He could, he was a good cup, but this is something that he must have learned from his new half share roots. I don't know that my sister really loved and I know all I remember is everybody making fun of him for this, but it was instant mashed potatoes. That was spread out on a plate. Mm-hmm. Just the Don't know that you'd already reconstituted it. You know, you'd cooked it with water or whatever you do. Then he flaked salmon out of a can on top of the potatoes. All right.

Then canned peas were put on that. Then according to my sister, and I do not know how this could be done successfully, he would put mayonnaise on top of that. So why that wouldn't collect the peas and put them to one side, I can't imagine. So I feel like was this baked then? I believe it was then presented to the child. Then she said we would eat it and make roads, you know, with our fork. So it was fun to make a road through the mayonnaise instant mashed potato, p and salmon dish.

So there's my recipe for your family, everybody. Did this recipe have a name? I don't know the name of it, but good luck getting the mayonnaise on top of the peas. You're going to do that. Well, and you attribute this to new Hampshire. This is a New Hampshire cuisine. Well, that's where he's from. I mean, it must be. Well, sometimes dinner is what we have in the cupboard. Yeah, absolutely. And that may have been a, yeah, that doesn't sound like something where

you go make a special trip to the piece. And was it do you have fun memories of this beyond making roads in the piece or was it was a good? I don't remember it being my favorite, but my sister says she loved it. And what I really remember is my mom looking down on that dish and making fun of it. But my sister says it was very popular. Okay. I guess I was pretty little. I don't remember it as well as she does. It may have worked

its way out of the rotation. I think it did because I remember it when I was maybe four, but not after. Do you think that you as someone who chose to be an actor also was influenced in some way by some of the dramas that you saw inside your kitchen, which were unscripted. Yeah, I'm sure I was. I mean, when the dramas are unfolding, it's not like I'm thinking, oh, neat, I can put this in a place someday. You know, I'm more like, oh, God, the world's ending. But I'm certainly those are very powerful influences. their situations if I'm doing a player movie where I will remember Something will remind me and I'll remember things that I thought I'd forgotten often about my own family or in the kitchen So it's definitely an influence and a lot of why it came an actor probably is from watching my going into theater and watching him rehearse and

TV's yeah my going into theater and watching him rehearse and TV's. Yeah, my dad, yeah. And what I really liked most was the atmosphere. I liked to be backstage and with my comic books and either watch the play or sometimes just hang out in the room. I just liked the feeling at a theater. I took me a long time to decide I wanted to. And once I started working, they were both just enormously supportive. I very much so.

My father were talking about every moment in the play I was in. My mom too, helping me read scripts, decide they were extremely supportive. In that kitchen of yours where lots of things happened, including some family dramas, is there a particular scene that you remember where you called upon something that happened in your kitchen? And that gave you the right emotion, the right intonation, the help to hit the emotional note that you needed to hit in that scene because you remembered you conjured up something that happened in your kitchen when you were young. I remember when I was pretty young, I might have used this, it's minor, but we had a light fixture over the kitchen table, you know, white glass bowl, you know, or the bulb.

And it fell and shattered and cut Sally. Sally McFall. Yes, I was cooking and it slid her hand open and bled. I have used that the fear I had and the suddenness of it. You could be chatting and happy and relaxed and watching somebody chop. She chopped beautifully, by the way. And suddenly somebody's bleeding. And she was perfectly fine, by the way. I was probably had to go to the emergency room. You know, she put some paper towel on her hand and masking tape because we never had band-aids or anything that really...

She was masking tape. I don't know for sure, but I know in my home, when you would cut yourself, there would be a mad search for something related that might cover a cut. There's another story of me falling out of a carriage and my parents coming home to see that I had been taped up with toilet paper and tape. There's no one could find a band. Have us still have a scar? Yeah. They dropped me out of my stroller, her and her friend, and then taped me with toilet paper. I remember a really sad time when my dad was not well, and I was alone with him in the kitchen, and he was had to stop to get his air and energy back. And I'd remember him standing by the sink, kind of holding himself up just very weak. I was alone. I was

sitting at the kitchen table and he was standing by the sink and I just remember the sadness of that and the kind of loneliness. I felt lonely, lonely for him, I guess. You know, I was growing up and here he was not well. And so that happened in the kitchen too. So there's a lot of sad things in that kitchen, truthfully, and a lot of joy too. Is that part of acting though, is when you're called upon to, you have to go through some sort of mental filing system and loneliness, joy, you know, all the emotions

that you go through and you have to figure out, where am I going to, how am I going to conjure this emotion? Yeah, it is. And those are two that I thought I'd before. You and your wife both have deep roots in New York. And New York has its own rhythms and its own flavor and food is just different in New York than it is really anywhere else. Having been a lifelong New Yorker, how is the kitchen that you and your wife Sarah put together, Sarah Jessica Parker? How is that influenced by the kitchens of your youth? Have you created an entirely new space or are there

things that you recognize now? Oh, that's why I keep the olive oil there. That's why I do this. Right. No, it is. It's a it's a combination of both of ours. We both are a little, you would never see like American cheese or a yodel in my house. It was very... A yodel. Is that like a ding dong? Yeah. What I mean is we didn't have no

American food like my friends might have. You didn't have that childhood kitchen. Not really. We had like some fancy salami from somewhere and just a little lot. Your parents didn't believe in snacks, no bugles, no potato chips, no. No, not much of that. No, sure. No, sure. Or the cap and crunch cereal or anything like that. Yeah, maybe that. And the maca, as I said, but I think sweet cereal like that was frowned upon. And I was always jealous of friends who had a big cupboard filled with bugles and Doritos.

Cheese whiz, but we didn't have any of that, or soda. So have you created that kind of kitchen in your own house or did you decide that my kids are gonna have Doritos? I think we have more unhealthy food. We have mostly very healthy food. I don't, we have this, usually some bags of chips going in my house. There's some corn chips or potato chips. There's something open that you can stick your hand in most of the time. And that would not have been at my wife's home either. Her mom was very against that sort of thing.

Was that, were they against it? Were both your parents against it because it was not healthy or because, particularly for your parents, were they trying to remain thin and fit because that's what their job required? Well, I always thought it was because it was unhealthy, but now that you say it, I'll bet you anything they didn't want to have it around for themselves because they wanted to be thin and fit. I'm sure of that. I know my dad wouldn't want that to be.

He was always struggling to not get heavy. So there were foods that I think they just didn't want around all day. Yeah, I'm sure of that. I never really thought of that until you told me, but yeah. Earlier in the show, you heard that show we say interesting recipe for that concoction that Matthew's father used to make that dish with the instant mashed potatoes and the canned salmon and the peas and all that mayonnaise. Well, it turned out, Matthew's sisters dared him to try that in your own kitchen. But I know that for Matthew and his wife Sarah Jessica Parker, the food and all that goes into preparing it is a very important part of their lives. So I wondered if there was something else that he wanted to share, something that to him tastes like home, something that people might actually look forward to making in their own kitchen that maybe didn't involve mayonnaise. I'm wondering if there's a recipe that you might want to share that tastes like home to you. What tastes like home? Well, there's many that I don't really remember how they were made, unfortunately. Raditouille that sell me that was incredible and I've never been

able to duplicate. It was very oily and spectacular. Tell me about it. What was so delicious about it? Well, it had the right amount of eggplant that wasn't blubbery or watery somehow, tomato, zucchini, garlic. I don't know why I loved it so much. She'd make big pots of it and I do not know how she made it, so I can't give you that recipe. It was very cooked.

I've made some from recipes that come out more fresh or less turned into a kind of compete. It got very gooey. Well, Ratatouille is hard because sometimes you have individual vegetables, usually nightshade vegetables that can still have so much of a crunch that it has more of a minestrone feel than a ratatouille. Yes, hers was not crunchy. And I know from making it myself that, you know, the trick is to cook all these things, the amount of time that each of them, you know, just throw it all in most recipes. You have to, that's what's on your plate to get some.

Yes, always did that. So I listened to you describe that Ratatouille recipe, Sally's Ratatouille, and your voice had music in it. We're going to figure out how to get you a killer recipe for Ratatouille. I love that. That would be great. That would be wonderful. I have loved talking to you. This has been a lot of fun. Me too. Thank you for making me remember all the stuff. It's one for me. A lot of fun. Thanks so much. Thank you. Was it just me or could you hear just how much Matthews childhood housekeeper Sally McFall and her cooking still cast a spell over him, even after all these years. It's like sorcery. And when it's something really special, you can spend a lifetime trying to catch that flavor,

even just one more time. Sometimes on the show, we help people find that roadmap back to a recipe they love. And let's do that for Matthew Broderick. Let's help him find a recipe for Ratatouille that will make him swoon. If him find a recipe for Raditouille that will make him swoon. If you have a recipe for Raditouille that sounds something like that sumptuous dish that Sally McFaul used to make for Matthew Broderick's family, all those years ago, we'd love to

hear from you. In fact, I'd like to hear from you because this conversation has me hankering for a delicious bowl that perfect medley of zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, and tomatoes. Share your recipes, share your techniques, and perhaps help settle the debate about whether in Ratatouille the vegetables should be chopped or sliced, it seems like there's some strong opinions on this. So roll by my Instagram page and use the hashtag your mama's kitchen to show us your version of Ratatouille. Thanks for listening to your mama's kitchen to show us your version of Rattertui.

Thanks for listening to your mama's kitchen. I'm Michele Norris, see you back here next time. This has been a higher ground and audible original, produced by higher ground studios. Senior producer Natalie Ritten, producer Sonia Tun, and associate producer Angel Carreras. Sound design and engineering from Andrew Epen and Roy Baum. Higher-ground audio's editorial assistants are Jenna Levin and Camilla Thurdecoose. Executive producers for Higher-ground are Nick White, Mukta Mohan, Dan Firmann, and me, Michele Norris. Executive producers for Audible are Zola Mashariki,, Nick DiAngelo, and Ann Hepperman. The show's closing song is 504 by The Soul Rebels.

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