Julie Gates (00:06):
Welcome to the Always a Logger podcast, where we tell the stories of how University of Puget Sound alums have taken their careers and life to the heights. We are talking to Rachel Martin today. Rachel's a 1996 political science graduate of UPS. She also has an honorary doctorate and was a commencement speaker in 2014. She's an award-winning journalist. You've seen her on ABC News and NPR, and we're so excited to talk to you today. Rachel, welcome to the show.
Rachel Martin (00:32):
Hi, Julie. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for asking.
Julie Gates (00:35):
Yeah, it's great to talk to a journalist. I would love to hear what was the biggest interview you ever had to do?
Rachel Martin (00:41):
The biggest interview I ever had to do. I would say that was probably Joe Biden, the presidential candidate.
Julie Gates (00:49):
Oh, yeah.
Rachel Martin (00:50):
I talked with Joe Biden when he was running to become the Democratic nominee. I'm sorry, he was already the Democratic nominee. He was running in the general against Donald Trump the first time, and we talked with him on his tour bus.
Julie Gates (01:14):
Yeah, a train. I thought he was doing a train thing?
Rachel Martin (01:16):
No. I mean maybe there was a train at some point. This one was on a bus. They called it the No Malarkey Tour, and obviously the stakes were high. It was a big PR interview. It was a big interview for me. We were seated right next to each other on a bench in the bus, and it got contentious at times. We know now in retrospect that President Biden had really had staff around him that controlled very tightly what he was prepared to say. So they did not appreciate any question that had not been pre-approved.
(02:02):
NPR as a rule doesn't send out questions in advance, so that led to some tension with his staff. But I mean, it was an important interview. I asked him about, at the time, the Hunter Biden laptop allegations were fresh, so we needed to ask about that variety of different policy issues. He was at the time having, having some challenges, ginning up support from younger people. So we talked about this. These were all things his staff wasn't super psyched about talking about. So that interview played all over the place. It got picked up in other outlets. It's pretty intimidating to talk to the former vice president and then presidential candidate when he started to get upset and starts wagging his finger in your face. So yeah, I would say because of the stakes, that was probably the biggest interview that I've done.
Julie Gates (03:05):
I can imagine being a journalist is hard work. I think folks just see typically the person on camera, on mic, but they don't really understand the stuff behind the scenes. You actually worked in Afghanistan. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Rachel Martin (03:21):
Sure. Yeah. I went to Afghanistan the first time in the summer between, let's see, I went to graduate school at Columbia for foreign affairs, not journalism, after 9/11. And so I started there in 2002 and the summer, between the two years in graduate school, Columbia would pay to support you in some kind of internship. There wasn't like an internship about how to become a foreign correspondent. That doesn't exist. You just do it. So I used that subsidy from Columbia to buy a plane ticket to Kabul, and I had known a couple of people who worked with the Afghan community in the Bay Area where I was living at the time, and those were sort of my only contacts, and I flew over there. In retrospect, it's crazy, especially now I'm a parent and I think about what my parents were going through when I just announced that I was going to fly to Afghanistan and had two phone numbers and
(04:26):
I had no clue what I was going to do. So in retrospect, it seems ill-advised, but that was the first time I went. I met a lot of people. I filed freelance stories for a show called The World, which you can hear on NPR, and a couple of short news spots for NPR and I sort of got hooked into the place. I met amazing, amazing people, befriended many people. The story was obviously hugely significant and consequential at the time. So when I left graduate school, when I graduated, I went back, I did some teaching, I taught local journalists through a European grant, and then I just was freelancing my butt off. I just found stories and filed nonstop for NPR. And at that point, most of the international press had left for Baghdad because by that point the war in Iraq had started, so major media outlets had sort taken their eye off the ball in Afghanistan.
(05:34):
So for a freelancer, there was a lot of work to be had, and I partnered up with a young woman who was a reporter for the Daily Telegraph, a Canadian newspaper, and she and I shared resources. We hired a fixer together who was a local producer on the ground who helps translate and drive, set up interviews, and we traveled all around the country. This was at a time when it was relatively secure enough that you could do that. And she was of Afghan descent, which actually was complicated for her, but as kind of a white lady in Afghanistan, I was treated as sort of "other," not threatening, so I would be allowed into certain spaces. So it gave me access to a lot of really important stories at that time. And then I kept going back. I was hired by NPR to work in the Berlin bureau after that, and I was just in and out of Afghanistan tsfor years. It's a story that to this day,
Julie Gates (06:34):
It doesn't sound like you were worried about your safety then, or were you?
Rachel Martin (06:38):
Oh, sure. I remember the first apartment that I stayed in, there was a bombing in the internet cafe that was below, and the second guest house I stayed in, there was a bombing that hit the neighbor's house. And so there were several close calls, so you'd be stupid not to be afraid, but you take calculated risks. I was in Jalalabad once with an Afghan friend who was serving as a translator for me, and we were staying in a hotel. There was no one else staying at this hotel. And at one point the Marines showed up and demanded that we leave because there was a bomb threat on the hotel, which was disconcerting because we didn't have anywhere else to go. So the Marines were just like, you got to get out of here, but we can't recommend that you go anywhere else. We're sort of walking around the streets of Jalalabad looking for somewhere else to stay. So yeah, there were all kinds of security threats, but it's really minuscule compared to what people who lived there endured on a daily basis or even what foreign correspondence or just local correspondents endured covering that place day in and day out. So you kind of get inured to some of those security threats, but you try to stay smart about them.
Julie Gates (08:05):
I don't understand, Rachel, cause I didn't walk in your shoes. I don't understand. Can you share with us what is it in a journalist that compels them to do this, to put themselves at risk, to tell these stories?
Rachel Martin (08:21):
I mean, there's suffering in the world. There is injustice in the world. There are most of us, especially in America, for people who aren't suffering themselves, and there are, but most Americans are just living their lives of privilege, walking through the world, trying to be good parents, good neighbors, trying to be good employees. And that's a lot in and of itself, but the world is a big place and there are a lot of people who need attention on their stories.
Julie Gates (09:01):
I see.
Rachel Martin (09:01):
It's not just because we need more people to empathize with them because I understand we only have so much capacity or bandwidth individually to empathize with people suffering in other corners of the world. But when you shine a light on those atrocities or wars or struggles, then it can change policy, too. And what kind of world would we live in if journalists didn't go to difficult places and say the truth of what was happening there? I mean, Gaza is a prime example. It's been really difficult to get any reporters in there, and NPR has maintained a local journalist on the ground there since October 7th, and if he weren't there, we wouldn't have nearly the scope of the devastation that has occurred in Gaza. So journalists bearing witness to what's happening in the world is crucially important for a democracy, for a functioning society, in my opinion.
Julie Gates (10:02):
Do you feel it's a calling?
Rachel Martin (10:06):
I don't know. That word has such heavy, you just want to do it or you don't want to do it. I mean, it's incredibly meaningful work,
(10:17):
And I think that people who, to use the word feel called to do it, yeah, maybe it is a calling. It feels important. It feels worthy. It feels like work that has integrity. Even though so much of journalism has been maligned, it still is work that matters so very much, and you only get one life. And so for me was, I mean, there's a reason I'm not doing that right now. It wears you down. And I didn't become a foreign correspondent. I played in that world for a couple of years. It's incredibly isolating. It's really emotionally draining, and the people who do it for years and decades have my utmost respect and admiration. But it's highly meaningful work.
Julie Gates (11:15):
I'm sure you're watching all across the globe and in the United States a shift happening with journalism. What would you like to say about that? What's your hopes for the future for journalism?
Rachel Martin (11:27):
That's a big question. What are my hopes for journalism?
Julie Gates (11:30):
There's just so much going on.
Rachel Martin (11:31):
What are my hopes for journalism?
Julie Gates (11:36):
This is your business.
Rachel Martin (11:38):
Oh, sure. It's just that there are a lot of things coming fast and furious. There's an administration that is trying to systematically take down certain parts of the free press — that's very difficult. There's a threat from artificial intelligence that newsrooms are grappling with right now. There's an inherent distrust among a lot of corners of the American population about how the news is made and what the nature of objectivity is. There's a fracturing of the media landscape that's not great. You can exist in your own information bubble. You can decide who your preferred curator of truth is, and then you just live in that world. And that's the most dangerous thing, is when people live in these echo chambers of information
(12:35):
And disinformation. And when you're not operating with the same set of facts, then how in the world are you supposed to come to any common ground or understanding about compromise or how to make policy, how to govern, how even get along? It's really easy to vilify your neighbor or a person with whom you disagree when you're locked in an information bubble where that's just the message 24/7. So it's a really hard time. There are a lot of forces working against the dissemination of free and fair, truthful information. So at the same time, we still need people to stay in the fight.
(13:23):
There's an increasing need for people who want to do this work and to do it well. The problem is mainstream institutions, which is where people used to incubate their careers, are really, really struggling. So I don't know what journalism is going to look like in 10 years. Yeah, there are individual startups, there are newsletters people are making, so many journalists are making themselves into their own media brands. Katie Couric does it very successfully. Chuck Todd left NBC, and he's building up his own brand. There's a consortium of journalists who start things like Political Punch Bowl or Puck News. So it's sort of the wild west right now. Yeah. And makes it hard for the consumer because there are so many choices on the one hand, but you have to be really vigilant about who you choose as your curator. And if you choose to live in this person's world, this curator's world, really the diligent thing to do as a citizen is to then seek out a different curator so that you are responsible for your media diet, and it needs to include various points of view so that you can piece together what's really going on and hopefully come to the truth of a thing.
Julie Gates (14:52):
That's a really good wisdom because it is easy for people to get stuck in their own echo chamber. And if we all want peace in the future and we want to have a good healthy Thanksgiving with family and get to know our neighbors, we're going to have to understand all points of view and come to the table willing to talk and listen for sure. So what about the young adults who are attending University of Puget Sound who may be writing for The Trail newspaper, or they have a radio show on what I used to call KUPS, but they now call it "cups." What advice would you have for them as they consider maybe journalism is their future?
Rachel Martin (15:28):
Go local. That is my advice right now. Individual communities are losing newspapers. They're losing public media stations, corporate conglomerates are buying up media outlets, TV outlets, so there are local news deserts. So if you want work that's consequential, stop dreaming about some big national reporting job, or maybe you get there, but think of your first job in local journalism, not just as a throwaway step, as maybe the end game, because that's where the battle is happening for hearts and minds, who believe in truth is at the very local, local level, and you can make such a difference there. Get an internship at whatever local news site there is. Stay if you're into radio, try to get an internship at whatever radio station is local. Also, when you go local, you'll end up getting exposed to far more parts of the organization. Maybe you're more keen on the business side. Maybe you actually find out you're really interested in advertising for media. Maybe you want to be behind the microphone. Maybe you want to be the person with a pen and pad out in the world doing the shoeleather reporting. If you make a real effort to get into a local community, and maybe that means uprooting yourself, move somewhere random, move to a totally random place and look at it with outsider's eyes and enthusiasm like you're a foreign correspondent. Right? Dive in there and try to find everything out that you can and try to understand what is motivating people, what is the source of their pain in their angst in those communities, and that's hugely important work that you will find incredibly meaningful, and it'll be really satisfying and you will learn a ton.
Julie Gates (17:30):
That's so good. That's so brilliant. Of course, start live and local. The network jobs might not be what they used to be.
Rachel Martin (17:37):
Right? There's a lot. You hold these jobs up on a pedestal, they're going away, those superstar salaries, and there are increasingly few outlets that even employ that many people at the national level. And so you can't just pin your hopes and dreams on The New York Times or NPR. So diversify your vision board for where you want to work. And again, get as local as you can.
Julie Gates (18:08):
That's really great. Let's talk a little bit about your Puget Sound experience. What was it like for you? Were you super active? Were you super academic? Did you nerd out in the classroom or were you out on campus making noise? What was your experience like?
Rachel Martin (18:24):
In one week, exactly one week from when we are speaking, I'm flying to Denver to have a reunion with three of my closest friends from UPS. We are still the best of friends, so I made lifelong friendships. I lived in Seward Hall my freshman year, and then I was a Pi Phi for a couple years, and then I realized--
Julie Gates (18:51):
I'm a Pi Phi! Oh my God. Is that how we know each other?
Rachel Martin (18:52):
Maybe I've seen your face
Julie Gates (18:55):
Literally Pi Phi stuff.
(18:57):
The framed pictures.
(18:59):
Oh, the composite. Yeah. Was I in your hallway?
(19:01):
You were in my hallway all this time.
(19:04):
I didn't know you were Pi Phi. That's great. Okay. So you did Greek system for a while,
Rachel Martin (19:08):
Julie, then I deactivated.
(19:10):
Okay. Everyone has a different journey. It's okay. We don't judge.
(19:14):
And I got really close with my friends who I lived off campus with. I didn't really, I did zero journalism at college that way was a career move that happened later for me. I sang in an acapella choir called the Dorian Singers at the time.
Julie Gates (19:32):
Love it.
Rachel Martin (19:32):
I had amazing professors, really, really amazing professors. Frank Cousins, who's a professor who just recently passed away. He spent many, many years teaching at UPS. It was instrumental in teaching me how to write, which became a crucial part of my livelihood. So I am forever grateful to him and just taught me how to believe in myself and my voice and to say what I mean. And that has helped me in countless ways.
Julie Gates (20:03):
Sure.
Rachel Martin (20:04):
So yeah, I loved my time at UPS. I also took Physics for Poets. Great class. I don't know if it's still,
Julie Gates (20:11):
I don't think I ever knew that existed. That's amazing.
Rachel Martin (20:13):
Fabulous. It was such a great class. All we did was read this huge book called The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. And when the movie Oppenheimer came out, I was like, I already know all this from my Physics for Poets class when I read all about the making of the atomic bomb.
Julie Gates (20:29):
Amazing.
Rachel Martin (20:31):
So yeah, I stretched in new ways academically, and I met wonderful, wonderful people who continue to inspire me to this day. It was a fabulous community.
Julie Gates (20:45):
Yeah, I've had the same experience. It's been- so good. You were invited to be our commencement speaker in 2014. I would like to hear about what that day was like for you, because from my understanding, it couldn't have been worse weather.
Rachel Martin (20:57):
It was wild. It was like a mini hurricane. I was barely allowed to fly because I was seven months pregnant at the time. You're in the no-fly zone. A doctor had to write a note being like, she's okay to fly, I guess. So yeah, it was wild. The student speaker, I can't remember her name, God bless her, she stood up. She gave this amazing speech, and the wind is just going and going and blowing. And then when she finished, the dean was like, we're going to dismiss this. Everyone's going to go to the gym. So everyone went to God, I forgot the name of the field.
Julie Gates (21:41):
Fieldhouse
Rachel Martin (21:41):
Fieldhouse.
(21:43):
So I went to the Fieldhouse to watch the rest of it on close caption TV. So, I gave my commencement address to empty chairs.
Julie Gates (21:52):
So you were still outside where the stuff was still outside, in the storm. And everyone else was inside.
Rachel Martin (21:59):
Raining and blowing. We were sort of undercover, but the only people there in my memory were my family members who were wearing little rain ponchos and just sitting in the front row trying to support me. It was very cute. What a wild experience. So I mean, it was still so flattering and really lovely to have been asked, and I ended up racing through the speech. I was just cutting lines as I went, let's get this thing done. So afterwards, one of my former professors, Bill Halton was like, okay, I know that was the live for radio version of the speech, so just make sure to send me the proper version of your speech to share with students, which I did, which is very nice.
Julie Gates (22:43):
What a wild experience. I'm sure it was a great honor to have the honorary doctorate degree as well from the university.
Rachel Martin (22:49):
Felt very, very special. Yeah.
Julie Gates (22:51):
Well, I know the university is very proud to call you an alum. You've done so many amazing things in your career. Let's talk a little bit about your time at NPR. I know you also worked at ABC News, but let's just roll right into NPR. That's where the bulk of your career has been. Tell us about that experience.
Rachel Martin (23:06):
Well, I could say a lot. I mean, I started at the NPR station in San Francisco as an intern, and it was really just thanks to this news director named David Gorn who just gave me a chance he really shouldn't have. I had no experience, but when you sit down to interview with someone, sometimes someone sees something in you and is willing to take a risk, and he definitely did with me. And I was there, like I said, when 9/11 happened and after 9/11, I felt like the world was a big place and something fundamental had broken in the world, and I wanted to be a part of trying to mend it in whatever small way that I could. And so I thought maybe I wanted to go work at the State Department or for the U.N.
(23:56):
So I actually, I applied to the School of International Public Affairs at Columbia University. I didn't apply anywhere else. I just wanted to go to that program in part because their brochure had Claire Shipman on the cover. And Claire Shipman was an ABC News TV reporter, and I was like, oh, interesting. She's a journalist, but she got this foreign policy degree. I wasn't really ready to ditch journalism altogether. So I got into that program and that really changed everything. I worked part-time on Friday nights at the NPR station in New York, WNYC, on Friday nights doing a newscast shift. But at that program, I just met so many people who had so much experience in different parts of the world and in Afghanistan. So meeting people, befriending people who had already worked there, made that idea to go freelance there possible in my imagination. And after doing that, that's when doors started to open for me at Big NPR.
(24:58):
And eventually, I mean, I joke all the time that I just build a career on babies and book leaves because anytime anyone got pregnant and was going on parental leave or wrote a book and was going to take time off for their book tour or to write the book, I was there to fill in. So I just raised my hand for everything. And as a result, I got experience in so many different places. Like I said, I got to do a stint in Berlin. I spent some months in Baghdad. I was the religion correspondent for a year while the religion reporter was out writing a book. And eventually, I didn't actually get my very first job at NPR until I was like 33. So I was just kind of live hand-to-mouth till then. And at 33, I was hired as part of the team that launched something called the Bryant Park Project at NPR.
(25:56):
It only lasted a year. It was like a beautiful flash in the pan. It was NPR's first attempt at creating a streaming news show. It was also a live two-hour daily news show that sort of competed against Morning Edition. But it was like for the younger demographic, it was big in college towns. It was an exhilarating, crazy ride of an experience for a year. And I was hired as the newscaster, but then there were all kinds of staffing changes. And I ended up being the host by the time, several months we were into the project. And then NPR killed it after a year, and before that show's demise, ABC, I'd been recruited by ABC to come work and try my hand at television. So I left, went to ABC for a couple years, was lured back by NPR to be a national security reporter. Did that for a couple years and then was hired to be the host of Weekend Edition Sunday, which was like a dream job for me. And I loved that work. And I did that for five years. And then I went to the big show. I went to Morning Edition and I worked at Morning Edition hosting that show with my talented colleagues, Steve Inskeep, David Green, and later Leila Fadel. I did that for six years and then I left. And then that's a whole other thing.
Julie Gates (27:21):
Yeah. Well, let's get into that in a minute. But you literally had the big chair at the big job. The biggest job you could get in your industry.
Rachel Martin (27:31):
In my little world. Yeah. It was the big job and I was thrilled and daunted, I took that job in December of 2016, so President Trump had just been elected and the news was just coming fast and furious. The metaphor got real tired, but that's what it felt like. Drinking from a fire hose every night you would go to sleep. I mean, you're lucky if you slept, you would go to bed understanding one plan for the show, and then you would wake up a few hours later. And the plan had totally shifted because something had happened overnight. So those years were really like dog years. I count them as dog years. I think every year should have counted for seven years.
Julie Gates (28:20):
It's amazing when you think about that. Did you feel like you arrived when you got that job?
Rachel Martin (28:25):
Oh yeah. I was like, this is it. This is what I've always do. I can't believe I get to do it. Yeah, it was amazing. I was so happy. I was really, really happy. It is a
Julie Gates (28:36):
Lot of, oh, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Keep going.
Rachel Martin (28:37):
No, I was just going to say it's a strange thing, and I don't mean to keep leading us there, but it's a strange thing to get to where you want to go, where you've always anticipated going and you get there and then you're like, okay, now I'm here and now maybe I'm ready to not be here anymore. And that's interesting how your perspective shifts, but
Julie Gates (28:58):
I hear that from a lot of people who've hit the apex of their industry when they get there or they win the big award, a lot of them are like, oh, now what? It's like they worked so hard to get to that moment. Did you experience something like that as well?
Rachel Martin (29:13):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, there wasn't a whole lot of time for reflection, honestly, in that job. It was so exhausting. And I had two very young kids at the time, so I was not getting enough sleep, and there was no time to think, am I happy doing this? There was no time. So it felt very important and it was important. And I learned really fast how to manage different parts of this work, how to do live interviews, how to do live interviews with people who flip it on you and make it about you, which is not a thing that I had any experience doing. Really confrontational interviews, which is not really NPR's jam, and all of a sudden we were in those moments. And so you're continuously trying to figure out how to do right by your listeners and your audience and to try to get to the truth of an issue and to keep you cool with people who wanted to spin it up and deflect and not answer the question that you had asked.
(30:25):
But I appreciated that challenge. I was hungry for that challenge. And so that kept me going for a long time. Actually, the highwire act of live radio is pretty intoxicating. So even though it freaked me out when I woke up at three o'clock in the morning and realized that I had X, Y, Z guest coming on the show, who I knew was going to be a difficult interview, and I had six minutes to wind our way through these necessary questions and think in the moment how to drag them back if they went on a walkabout in the middle of their conversation and how to bring them back. And I loved doing that. It felt like a magic trick when you could pull it off successfully. I dunno that I did it that often, but 2% of that, that kept me going for as long as I did.
Julie Gates (31:21):
Well, let's pivot to what you're doing today, which is a little bit, there's still some parallels, but there's a little bit of a departure from doing hard news. It was about your current show, Wild Card.
Rachel Martin (31:33):
Yeah, 180 degrees. I was tired, like I said, I've said that word many times. So I was spiritually exhausted from covering the news, not just politics, but gun violence. It's hard. If another school shooting happened. I wasn't going to be able to do it. In fact, I didn't. When Uvalde happened, my news director called and said, can you go? And I said, I cannot. I said, I cannot go. And I so appreciate reporters who do go, the people who continue to go, but I could not do it anymore. And so after the 2022 midterms, I just knew I was done. It was time to let someone else do that. And we'd gone through COVID and broadcasting from home and feeling isolated, and those were a dark few years. So I needed something brighter and lighter, and I needed something that filled me up instead of depleting me.
(32:40):
So it was really a self-serving project when I pitched this idea. But I think it's an interview show if people haven't heard it, it's an interview show. But we use these cards and they're all cards that have questions on them that are really existential in nature and deep and provocative and hopefully ends up when we're done, we've grafted together a conversational experience that feels uplifting and that you see yourself in the questions. And it's not about politics. It's supposed to be about things that bind us together, that tether us together in our common humanity. And that's where I wanted to be professionally for a few years. So NPR, God bless them, let me do this. And so I work with amazing producers and editors, and we get to make this show each week, and it's been really awesome. And it happens to be a celebrity interview show. Oh, look at you.
Julie Gates (33:35):
The Wild Chard, the game where cards control the conversation.
Rachel Martin (33:39):
I do mean that.
Julie Gates (33:40):
How do you have the little cards? I made some cards for your interview today because you interview celebrities like Harrison Ford, Shonda Rhimes, Brenee Brown, the list. The list. I thought we should take some of the questions that you've been asking them and play the game with you.
(33:58):
I love it.
(33:59):
Are you game?
(33:59):
Sure, of course I am.
(34:00):
Alright. We're going to start with the memories question. Are you going to do card number one, card number two, or card number three?
Rachel Martin (34:06):
One.
Julie Gates (34:07):
Okay. Memories. What's the moment when you felt proud of yourself as a kid?
Rachel Martin (34:13):
Something, I actually never answered that question. The moment I felt proud of myself as a kid. Well, the first thing that came to mind is that I was in the church choir at my little church, and my family went to church a lot when I was growing up, to the Presbyterian church in Idaho Falls, Idaho. And I was chosen to sing a solo on Father's Day, and I felt very proud of myself. I practiced my little song and it was by Amy Grant and it was called Father's Eyes, so it was like a dumb thing. And I was seven, I was little, and it was the first time I got a lot of praise from adults and I was like, this is awesome. Very early on I was like, oh, it's cool to be affirmed by other people and grownups in particular. So yeah, I felt proud of myself.
Julie Gates (35:22):
That's so cute. Do you still do singing today?
Rachel Martin (35:25):
Oh, it's something I'd like to get back to, to be honest. I've had music and singing in my life in various forms and dabbled in things, but between, I spend a lot of time raising humans right now. I only have two of them, but they take a lot of time. And I'm pleased to have built this side of my career where I have more time to be a parent. So maybe when they go to college, maybe. But right now we just do a lot of singing in our kitchen.
Julie Gates (36:01):
That's great.
Rachel Martin (36:02):
We do a lot of callouts to Alexa and singing time in the kitchen.
Julie Gates (36:07):
That's so cool. How old are your tiny humans?
Rachel Martin (36:09):
They're not a tiny anymore. They're 11 and 13.
Julie Gates (36:12):
Oh, those are fun and interesting years.
Rachel Martin (36:14):
Yeah, they're both fun and interesting.
Julie Gates (36:16):
You're seeing their personalities really shine. Okay. It is time for the insights question again. I've pulled these questions from Rachel's show. If you've not checked out Wild Card, it's now on YouTube, but you can also find it. Oh my God. Yeah. Great. Okay. Card one, two, or three for your insights. Question two, two. What future have you... No, you don't know the future yet. It's not a psychic show today. What failure have you learned the most from?
Rachel Martin (36:45):
Ah, what failure have I learned the most from? There's so many to choose from. There's so many to choose from. Oh my God, I have so many. And then now I know what it's like to be a guest on my show. Now I'm editing. I'm like, is that one I want to talk about? Nope. Do I want people to know this? That one? Nope. Don't want to share that one. I'll talk about TV news. I don't know that I failed at TV news, but I wasn't the best at it. And some of that had to do with my own insecurity in that world. And some of it had to do with leadership there at the time. But I left of my own accord, but I did not thrive in that environment. And I had wanted to, I really wanted to be good at it. I was mapping out a career. Maybe I can be the host of the Today Show. And it wasn't my thing. It wasn't my thing and I didn't shine there. So I don't know that it was a failure, but it wasn't a good fit for me. And I learned that your dreams are malleable and that you may have this concrete vision of what your future is going to be. And then you start walking down that road and you're like, it is not going to be down this road. I got to build a different road somewhere else.
(38:48):
And that was scary at first, and then it was not scary. So I just learned that you can pivot. I just learned how to make change and not be freaked out by it.
Julie Gates (38:59):
Well, what advice would you give our young graduates or our seniors or our young alums about that? Because a lot of times we think we need to know all the answers before we step off campus and go into our career. But it sounds like you're saying just be malleable and pivot.
Rachel Martin (39:14):
Just try things. Just swing for the fences. You will only get more risk averse as you age. I swear to you, you'll only get more risk averse as you age. So swing for the fences now.
Julie Gates (39:26):
That's good.
Rachel Martin (39:27):
Dream big. And then match that dream with action, go do it. Go do the thing and make the call. Be ostentatious. Be audacious about what you want in life, and then go do it. Go take steps towards it. And if it doesn't work, then change. No harm, no foul. There's not going to be anyone sitting around being, judging you because you tried a thing that didn't work. Who cares? Try something else. But it mentally gets harder as you get older because maybe you start a family, there are higher consequences. You're paying off debt. Things get tricky. So swing big when you're young.
Julie Gates (40:12):
That's so good. Okay, final question from the wild card. What do you want? One, two, or three for the beliefs question?
(40:19):
Three.
(40:20):
Three it is. Oh, this is so heavy, but it's important who you are. How has grief shaped your life?
Rachel Martin (40:28):
Oh, it's a big one. Hugely. These are your questions. 90% why I started the show, because my parents died. My mom died a long time ago now, 17 years ago, and she died of cancer and she was my best friend. And so all the associated grief with that for many years. And then my dad died three years ago, so it was really after he passed away that I just felt immensely unmoored. I just felt like, I don't know what any of this means. Life is so short. It is the blink of an eye. None of us have control over it. How long we get to be here? And my dad was working really up until weeks before he died. He was working. He was a lawyer. He had clients he deeply cared for and needed to make sure that their issues were kind of sorted.
(41:28):
And I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be that, and I didn't want to prolong, not prolong. I didn't want to put off any more of my dreams or how I wanted to show up in the world. I didn't want to delay that anymore. And so it really is why I quit Morning Edition. I didn't want to share that way anymore. I had done it and I didn't want to do it anymore, and I wanted to be more myself. I wanted a job that allowed me to stop compartmentalizing and be more myself and talk more about my values. And so I was really lucky to have had this chance. And so grief has shaped my life a lot in that the people I love are not here anymore. And that it becomes foundational into how you look at the world, but in a concrete way, it helped lead me to the show that I made with my good friends and producers, and hopefully it's a show that allows people to talk about grief, but also just centers on love and connection and how we all get through this life together.
Julie Gates (42:44):
Yeah, I'm really enjoying your new project, so I really recommend anybody check it out because I find it inspiring and funny. There's a lot, it's not hobby all the time, I promise, but it has to be refreshing for you to have an opportunity to let that side of you come out. You're a very funny person.
Rachel Martin (43:01):
Well, thanks. You're welcome. I appreciate that, Julie. My family, my kids do not think I'm funny at all. I'm like, guys, I'm pretty hilarious.
Julie Gates (43:12):
No, we think we're hilarious. The kids never will think we're funny. The day our kids think we're funny, I don't even know, that's when a rocket's going to hit the planet Earth.
(43:21):
Not holding in my breath.
(43:23):
Which is, yeah, exactly. Well, thank you, Rachel. It's been great to just spend some time getting to know you. I would just love to wrap things up with you, reflecting a little bit on how Puget Sound might've influenced you and who you've become today.
Rachel Martin (43:36):
Yeah, I mean, I think Puget Sound is such a special community. They're like these sliding, sliding door experiments you do, I'm sure thinking about other things, other lives you could have led if you had chosen this or this school over this school. Right. I'm so glad that my sliding door ended on that campus in Tacoma. I feel forever grateful for the professors I had, for the friendships that I made. It helped me. That place opened my mind and my imagination to the world, and I just wouldn't be the person that I am without having that four years there. And so I just feel really grateful to everybody who makes that place tick from the people who work in the Sub. Do we still call it the Sub?
Julie Gates (44:33):
I do.
Rachel Martin (44:36):
And all the staff and obviously all of the wonderful professors and administrators and everybody who supports the school. It's a really, really special place. And if you guys are listening, if you're current students, you're really lucky. You're really lucky to get to go there and soak up every single second of it. Every second of it, because it's really precious.
Julie Gates (45:04):
Thank you, Rachel. You're welcome. If people want to follow you and keep track of you and your endeavors,
Rachel Martin (45:09):
Oh my God, is now my time where I get to say that you guys need to follow me?
(45:13):
Yep. You got to push all the things now.
(45:16):
It's hard to build a new show. Go to YouTube. So you can subscribe to that on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts: Wild Card with Rachel Martin. But also, if you really want to be helpful right now we're trying to build our audience on YouTube. So go to YouTube and search @NPRWildCard and then hit the button, subscribe. And that would be awesome. I would be so grateful if you did that.
Julie Gates (45:41):
Yeah, let's show her some Logger pride and let them see a massive surge of followers and subscribers. So everybody go subscribe Wild Card on YouTube. Thank you, Rachel. You're amazing. Thank you. Whoops. I just hit my microphone. Hopefully it didn't make weird noise. You've been wonderful. Thank you for sharing your story and for being such a valued part of our community. And if someone is watching and they have a guest idea of a Puget Sound alum, we should talk to who's taken their career or their life to the heights like Rachel Martin, send me an email at JulieGates@pugetsound.edu.
(46:11):
Thank you so much!
