Classy's Jonathan Menjivar: The Fine, Awkward Art of the Personal Audio Documentary

This transcript was auto-generated from an audio recording. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Hi, storytellers. It’s Season 3. Sound Judgment is back! I’ve missed talking to you, and bringing you into the studios of today’s most interesting audio storytellers. I began talking with this season’s wild and wonderful lineup of guests and realized in one way or another, they’re all exploring how much we trust each other, how much we can trust each other, and how we dare to tell stories about the things we usually keep under cover. 

This season’s guests are all pushing the boundaries of what we, as journalists, reveal. They’re using all of the narrative tools at our disposal to make gripping stories about often ordinary things—the things that affect all of us. Like sex. Death. Money. Class. Beauty. Attraction…and power. 

These creators are stretching their own comfort zones—and ours—as they figure out how much, or how little, to share of their innermost thoughts and feelings. 

Jonathan Menjivar

I was just like, you know what, let's just have a space where we can just say what we're actually thinking, you know, even if it is embarrassing, offensive—like, there are a lot of things that I say in the show where I had to be like, Can I really say this, you know? Can I say this publicly?

Elaine Appleton Grant 

That’s my guest today: Jonathan Menjivar, host and senior producer of Classy, from Pineapple Street Studios, about the sticky, tricky, hidden subject of class in America. 

This is Sound Judgment, where we investigate just what it takes to become a beloved audio storyteller by pulling apart one episode at a time, together. I’m Elaine Appleton Grant.

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Elaine Appleton Grant

Welcome, Jonathan Menjivar. I am so delighted that you're here on Sound Judgment.

Jonathan Menjivar

Thanks so much for having me.

Elaine Appleton Grant

How did the show come about? Classy? Because it's very idea driven. I was imagining that it was a little hard to wrap your arms around at first.

Jonathan Menjivar

It was, yeah. I mean, it came about just because I felt like I had something I needed to say, you know. This is—like, these issues around class are a thing that have kicked around in my head and bothered me pretty much my entire life. But it's hard to make a show about it, because so much of these things are internal stories. And nothing happens on the outside. It's not like there is action and plot and all the things you normally need to tell a story, you know? But I do think that all of that stuff that is going on inside your head sometimes causes you to act in strange and funny ways. And so I just I figured there's got to be good stories about things that people have done, because they are dealing with these strange feelings.

Elaine Appleton Grant

In listening to it, it really affects everybody. Like there's not a person in this country it doesn't affect in some way. And I was like, Oh, wow, this is mind-bending, almost.

Jonathan Menjivar

Yeah, I didn't realize it myself. But when I pitched the show to my bosses, Jenna Weiss-Berman and Max Linsky, Max immediately started telling me about his own experience with class. He had grown up in a higher class than than I did, but it triggered this thing in him, where it was clear that we are all, all the time, looking up and down. And comparing ourselves to the people around us. I hate that we even have to describe this as up and down. I wish we could just go side to side when we're talking about class. Maybe this shouldn't be the class ladder, it should be the class train track or something. But anyway—

Elaine Appleton Grant

Yeah, or web or something. 

Jonathan Menjivar

Something, something. Yeah. But that we are all comparing ourselves to the people around us and thinking about our own class position, based on how we measure up against people. And to see that that was happening in a really powerful way with Max, somebody who grew up completely differently than me, and had had exposure to really high-class people in Manhattan as a young person, I was like, wow. And I think he recognized too: that is the power of this show, is that you start telling a story like this, and then people automatically start thinking of their own stories. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

What's been the most memorable response you've gotten from this series so far?

Jonathan Menjivar

I think the most memorable response—there's one review, I know I'm not supposed to read the reviews—

Elaine Appleton Grant

But how can you not? How can you not?

Jonathan Menjivar

There's one review…I'm not going to quote it correctly, exactly. But they say, this isn't a standard interview show. It's a bunch of flawed characters trying to figure out how to live good lives. And that is not a thing we intended, but I loved that description of it. I'm certainly a flawed character, but that every one of us in the show, I think are—you know, we're running into all sorts of moral questions throughout the show. So yeah, I thought that was a really apt and perfect description, and not one I would have come up with myself.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Set up the series for the Sound Judgment listeners briefly.

Jonathan Menjivar

Yeah, so this series is—it comes from a very personal perspective of me as somebody who grew up working class. My parents were immigrants from El Salvador and Mexico and had factory jobs my whole life. And now I work in media, I live on the East Coast, I live a very different life than they did. And it's given me all sorts of uncomfortable and weird feelings. That’s sort of the way in to talk to a bunch of different people of different classes, about the way class shows up in their life, and it's through all sorts of different things. Work, we talk about food and clothing and music, there's an episode about army recruiting, an episode about television… It was just like a way to say this stuff is everywhere, and let's look at it. Class is so often talked about as money. But I think, in my experience at least, there's this whole other element that is equally important, which is about the culture that you experience.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Whenever I invite a guest on Sound Judgment, I ask them to share an episode of their show that either they loved making, or they found very challenging. Sometimes this is one and the same. You offered up the very first episode in this series, which is called “Are Rich People Bad?” And you chose to talk about it today because it does a lot of work to set up the series for the audience, which it does. But the other thing was that you said, it's also one where I feel like we as a staff really found the voice of the show, both in the interviews, and in some of the writing I did.

Storytellers, I want to give you a taste of this first episode. Jonathan, you share your background in a way that's so specific and evocative that I feel like I am right there with you as a little kid, getting up off of two different couches. So take a listen to this.

Clip from Classy

Jonathan Menjivar: I don't remember my parents together. The only evidence that had happened are a couple of photos. And me, I guess. 

The memories start with Soul Train. If I was at home with my mom on a Saturday morning, Soul Train was on. Watching everyone on screen dance felt like our own personal disco. I loved it. The minute the host came on, my mom would pull me off the couch and force me to dance with her. 

Man: And now here's your host, Don Cornelius.

Don Cornelius: Hello, and welcome aboard. You’re right on time for another ride on the big train. 

Jonathan Menjivar: If I was with my dad on a Saturday morning, he'd pull me off the couch when Soul Train came on. 

Man: And now, here's your host, Don Cornelius. 

Don Cornelius: Hello, and welcome aboard. You’re right on time for another ride on the big train. We’ll be coming…

Jonathan Menjivar: My dad Carlos lived in a crappy little apartment complex in Whittier, California, just outside of LA. This place had green shag carpeting, pictures of lions and tigers on the walls—and he'd put them in these homemade wooden frames that he'd singed on the stove. My dad didn't make a lot of money. So all the decor was kind of DIY in that way. Instead of a big-screen TV, he had this way he could make his small TV look bigger.

Carlos: I bought a—like, it's a big lens I will put in front of the TV so it will project a bigger picture.

Elaine Appleton Grant

You've been writing scripts for a long time. You produced for Terry Gross on Fresh Air and Ira Glass at This American Life. Talk to me about why you start this episode with those two scenes, you know, the short one with your mom and then this longer, more really specifically descriptive one with your dad.

Jonathan Menjivar

I think just—it feels real crazy, now, as I explain it, to be like, okay, in order to tell you about this, I gotta take you back to the very beginning. But, talking about not remembering my parents being together—it was just like a shorthand way of explaining, look, this is the world I come from, it's a place where people were working hard. People got married young. Sometimes that didn't work out. And also I hope, without me saying too much, that that tells you a lot about my life. Just like—my parents were divorced before I can even remember. I'm not even going to go into details now. But that is like a pill that you can take that's going to tell you a whole bunch of things. And I also, too—it was very important to me, and at least one of our other producers on the show, Kristen Torres, that if we were going to be talking about poor people, about working-class people on this show, that they be presented with life, and joy, and celebration, and laughter. So often when class is talked about in media, it is through a lens of, look at these people suffering. Totally understandable why that's true, because there are a lot of people suffering. That's where drama and tension lies. You know, if you're in the news business, that's the stories you’re going to tell. But it was really important to me that we set this up to say, these are people who have fun, full lives. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

And I was really struck by the fact that, you know, in the first minute or two of the whole series, that that sort of joy comes through. That was fun. And it sounded like it was fun in both places. And it was a shared culture. I mean, they both loved the same show, the same DJ. And it was clear that you are presenting both of them with love. And that was really nice because of what you just said, right? A series about class in America could have been deadly. And it seems to me like you wanted to set it up not just about love and joy from the beginning, and all the messiness of it, but also that this was going to be entertaining.

Jonathan Menjivar

For sure. Yes, definitely. We're going to be exploring class, but don't worry, it's not a class on class.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Last season, I interviewed Julia Barton, the executive editor of Pushkin Industries, about Pushkin’s first annual anthology of the best audio storytelling of the year.  When I asked her what she thinks the best stories share in common—what it is that actually makes them the best —she said this:  

Clip from Sound Judgment

Julia Barton: You gotta leave a hole for the listener to do some work, you know? To fill in, to want to know things. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

That concept has stuck in my mind ever since—the idea that if, as a writer, we do the work well, the listener will mull over an idea or a scene or a character.  They’ll be transported into something from their own lives—much the way Jonathan said the minute he pitched Classy to his bosses, they got that this series would make you recall your own experiences and feelings about class. That happened to me. And I wanted to understand better how Jonathan sees his role as a producer—why it matters that, as storytellers, we summon the courage—or the chutzpah—to ask deeply personal questions of just about anybody. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

I think I mentioned that, you know, by halfway through the first episode, I was uncomfortable, and I couldn't stop listening. And I kept thinking about this one time when I was shopping for my prom dress, which was polyester. And I bought some costume jewelry. And my parents got really mad, and they made me take it back, because it was a little bit more expensive than other stuff that I'd had. And they accused me of trying to keep up with the Joneses. And I never forgot that. I mean, I was like, 16 years old, and I never forgot, like, Oh, I was supposed to be ashamed or not try to do that—or whatever. And so I wondered: What do you think the role is in having conversations about uncomfortable things as a producer and a host?

Jonathan Menjivar

I think—you know, I was interviewed by a reporter for the LA Times for this show, who pointed out—he was kind of like, I kind of take issue with your characterization that we don't talk about class, because we're talking about it all the time. Almost immediately when you meet somebody, it's like, what do you do? Which is a class question. Where'd you grow up? Where’d you go to college? Where do you live? And like, connected to that is, are you a renter or are you a homeowner? That question is not being asked, but it is being asked. And so we're dancing around these conversations all the time. And so I think I was just like, let's just have a space where we can just say what we're actually thinking, even if it is embarrassing, offensive. Like, there are a lot of things that I say in the show where I had to be like, Can I really say this, you know? Can I say this publicly? 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Like what? What was one of those things where you were like— 

Jonathan Menjivar

I mean, there is an episode where I talk about how I feel about people who do service work for me. So people who deliver food, the woman who cleans my house and her crew. I mean, one, it’s mortifying to me to even admit that I have somebody who cleans my house. Even though I live in the suburbs, where I can look out the window and I see crews going in and houses all day long, to admit that that is my reality is hard for me. I come from housekeepers. My mom was a housekeeper and my grandmother was a housekeeper. And the woman who cleans my house, she's somebody I love dearly, who's been in our lives for more than a decade. But we don't really really know each other, you know? Yeah.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Right. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I talked to a lot of people who—they want to start a podcast. And then they literally get stymied, because they get nervous about being themselves on the mic, or even giving a little bit of themselves away. So how did you get beyond—in that moment, like, Oh, can I do this, what did you say to yourself?

Jonathan Menjivar

By the time we did that episode, we were several episodes in. And so I turned to my producers and was like, you know, please tell me: Do I sound like a total asshole in this moment? Yeah. So I was leaning on my crew, who I really trusted. But I do think it appears in this show that I am revealing a lot. You know, it is deeply personal. But there were lines that I didn't cross. Lines that I established for myself. And I mean— that opening we were talking about, there is a reason why I just say, I don't remember my parents together, and I don't go into any of the details of their divorce or what caused it or what came about afterwards. It's just like, nope, that's for me. Yeah, so I just established some lines for myself and figured out ways to talk about things that—in a way that felt comfortable, that I was okay with. Yeah.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Yeah. So you emailed me that this episode has some of your favorite lines in it.

Clip from Classy

Jonathan Menjivar: You know who doesn’t want to be the obnoxious, rich person? I don’t want to be an obnoxious rich person. Don’t worry, I’m not in any danger of that happening. But you know, there are some things about my life that some people might consider obnoxious. I mean for one, I make a decent living doing exactly what I’m doing right now—talking about ideas and putting together stories and sharing them with people like you. What an insane privilege that is. 

Or you know, sometimes when I’m feeling stressed out and I need to center myself, I think about this time when I was in Japan sitting in an onsen staring at the mountains. An onsen is what the Japanese, and also obnoxious people who’ve been to Japan, call hot springs. 

And maybe the biggest one for me is that my wife and I own a house. My entire life, I was a renter. 

Jonathan Menjivar

Yeah, that was some writing I did late one night where I felt like, it is confessional, I am revealing things… In that episode, we are talking all about the ways in which we try and position ourselves and tell our class story to feel morally better, or morally okay. And then when I wrote the onsen line, I was just like, that—yes. I'm the mark here. I'm the one who is first going to put my head on the chopping block. When the jokes come, they're going to be at my expense first. And I felt like it then set the tone for the show—like, look, I'm willing to look really stupid, you know? And so everybody else here should should feel comfortable knowing that if I'm going to criticize anyone in this, it's going to be me first.

Elaine Appleton Grant

I wanted to go back to something unusual Jonathan mentioned. The episode we’re pulling apart —Episode 1—was the first episode they released, but it wasn’t the first one they’d made. And what he’d said was that this episode was the one where he and his staff found the collective voice of the show. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Describe for me what was going on, before the staff found its voice and and what was that shift?

Jonathan Menjivar

I think we were having a hard time figuring out, one, how to tell narrative stories about this. And the shift really was, though, that interview with Rachel Sherman, the sociologist, where it is on paper the most boring thing you could think to do. It is an interview with a sociologist, talking about class. And really a bunch of it is defining what do we mean by class? And I just decided— we decided, really, me and the producers were working on it—that we are going to approach this interview with an academic in a totally fun and loose way. And, some of that was my producers prepping Rachel for that. And I think you can really tell that Rachel is game. Like, she understands what we are up to. She is coming at me, she is putting me on the spot…

Clip from Classy:

Rachel Sherman: Is being a lazy jerk and not having an understanding of what you need to do to earn money the same thing? 

Jonathan Menjivar: I guess not, no. 

Rachel Sherman: So why is it that you think that earning money is the only way to not be a lazy jerk?

Jonathan Menjivar: It's so dangerous talking to a sociologist!

Rachel Sherman: Well, I think, I mean, that's the thing. There's so much of this stuff that we take for granted—

Jonathan Menjivar: Well, also, because so many other people are really struggling to just have their basic needs met. They're working really hard.

Rachel Sherman: Well, that's true. But—but, sorry, so what about that?

Jonathan Menjivar: I'm just saying, like—part of it is, I think, just because there are so many people who are—they're having to work really hard to earn enough money to just pay the rent and feed themselves.

Rachel Sherman: Right, but what about that? Sorry, I'm just not understanding.

Jonathan Menjivar: No, no, no, no, no. That, like, if you are a rich person who just inherited money—like, you don't understand tha, there are so many other people around you who are doing that. 

Rachel Sherman: Yes. And if you’d understand that, why is that better?

Jonathan Menjivar: Just because you should be interested in other people's situations and empathetic.

Rachel Sherman: And if that's the case, does it mean it's okay for you to have the three billion dollars? 

Jonathan Menjivar: Oh God.

Jonathan Menjivar

I was just like—we're gonna be super loose in how we do this, and even like a little silly. When I ask her the question, are rich people bad? I do this move where I list a series of fictional and real rich people that are villains, or seen as kind of dumb, or evil.

Clip from Classy

Jonathan Menjivar: The story of Robin Hood, and why that has its appeal. Thurston Howell the third, from Gilligan's Island. All of the Trumps. Every preppy guy in 80s movies, Sam Bankman-Fried, Elizabeth Holmes, Rupert Murdoch, all the characters in Succession, the Koch brothers, Bernie Madoff, Scrooge McDuck, Cruella Deville, Mr. Burns…

Jonathan Menjivar

Lists are funny. Lists that are too long. It's a pretty standard comedy thing, where there is a point at which it starts to get funny, it stops being funny, and then it start to get funny again. And I was just like—let's just try it. I have no idea if this is gonna work. It's pretty dumb. But it just—I don't know—it just brings an energy to that episode that I feel really helps us define, like, Okay, we are going to be talking about some serious stuff. But it's going to be real loosey goosey. And I'm not afraid to sound like an idiot doing it.

Elaine Appleton Grant

There are several things that make this series work…and we could debate them, because, storytellers, you’ll hear things that I don’t, and vice versa. But to me, one is the characters Jonathan’s team spent a lot of time and effort finding. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Let me play a clip from one of my favorite characters. So this is an Army recruit, basically a high school kid. And his first name is Knowledge, which I kind of love. He lives in Paterson, New Jersey, in the inner city, which is a very dangerous place. And this is in an episode midway through about how the military recruits people in America, and what that says about class—much of which is very surprising.

Clip from Classy: 

Knowledge: I like Mother Nature, I like being out in nature. Like, I honestly feel like if I had a second life, I would be a farmer. I like animals, I like cows, I like horses, I like all that kinda stuff. 

Jonathan Menjivar: You still got time for that life, man.

Knowledge: I told my family, I said, when I settle down, I’mma get me a little farm, get me a little horse, a little pony or something, get some chickens, and just eat some raw eggs or something. Yeah. I don’t know. I just like—like, if I was to go out in the forest and if I was able to see the sunset, I would literally just sit on the ground and just watch it for hours. Like, even in my backyard, I have a little space, fake grass I can lay down on, put some sheets on and lay down, and just look up at the moon, the stars at night. I just like that kinda thing because it helps you escape from reality sometimes. It helps you see how beautiful the world can be sometimes.

Elaine Appleton Grant

That is so gorgeous.

Jonathan Menjivar

I know. Knowledge is just incredible. Oh, my God, I love him so much.

Elaine Appleton Grant

You didn't have to go there with him. You could have simply stayed with questions that a lot of journalists would ask, about why are you joining the military and how hard is it been to get in and what do you want to do after? But you went someplace very different. So what was that conversation like that made him tell you about basically his innermost dreams?

Jonathan Menjivar

Yeah. I knew going in that where he lived was violent, and that he saw the Army as a way out of that neighborhood. And so the question that I asked him was just, what's it like living in Paterson? Just tell me about it. I didn't want to frontload the violence. I was just, like, let's just start from zero—like, what is this? And immediately what he told me was there are basically hours where it is safe to be outside and hours where it is not. And that essentially, he's trapped in his house often. And thematically that's tied in so much to the question we were asking in that episode, which is really about options. Let's be frank about it. There are people because of their class situation who have options, who have all the options in the world, and those who do not. And I think, ultimately, that's what we're saying with that story. Knowledge is so beautiful in describing what he wants in life. But it's also very simple. It's just being outside. He just wants to be outside. He wants freedom to move.

But like, I wish I could tell you like, I had all these tricks to get him to talk like that. And the truth is, Knowledge is a special kid who was smart, and I think, really understood what I was doing there. We were there pretty quickly in the interview, 

We talked to at least 30 people, searching for the right character for this role in the story. We did a lot of producing to find the right person. And I will say, we were very scared at one point that we weren't going to get that person, in terms of deadlines and stuff. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

So much of it is in the curation. And that's so interesting that you talked to 30 people—which, you know, you were fortunate enough to have the time and space and the staff to do that.

Jonathan Menjivar

Actually, this show we were doing relatively fast. And when I say we talked to 30 people, Marina and I talked to 30 people at an Army recruiting event in one morning. And it was just clear, like okay, these six people, call them, because they're the ones who are standing out. So it wasn't—that wasn't a months and months casting process for this person.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Do you think of yourself as someone who likes having uncomfortable conversations?

Jonathan Menjivar

Absolutely not. No way. No way. No way. I mean, yeah, I have no idea why I signed up to have them. I mean, I do like having authentic conversations. I'm not somebody who just wants to sit and chit-chat about the weather, like, I'm willing, if we meet at a party, within the first five minutes, to be talking about really deep stuff. Just because—I don't know, I like connecting with people and talking about real things in a real way. But that being said, if you meet me at a party, please do not start asking me deep, uncomfortable questions right away.

Elaine Appleton Grant

I guess there's some semantic difference between deep real questions and uncomfortable conversations.

Jonathan Menjivar

Yeah, but with the show, I realized I was gonna have to have them. And it was really—you know, it took some coaxing on the part of people who were working with me, on my bosses and my producers. So, like, I did not want to talk about my cashmere socks. Yeah. I have never revealed to anyone that I have cashmere socks.

Elaine Appleton Grant

But until was it Vogue picks up on that?

Jonathan Menjivar

Well, no, I mean, I mentioned it in the first episode, because while we were developing the show, one of our producers asked me, What's the thing that is your—kind of the way that you are indulgent now in your life? And it's clothes. I'm super into clothes. And so while we were in a meeting, people asked me to do a fit check, to just name everything that I was wearing. And I revealed that I was wearing cashmere socks, and they were just like, Oh, my God, we have to talk about that on the show.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Did you say no, no, no, not gonna do it?

Jonathan Menjivar

Well, I mean, there was some resistance, you know? I don't know. I just—I feel—I feel weird about it. I feel like it marks me in a certain way. But they are nice. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

I was struck by Jonathan’s delivery. It really is what he sounds like—pretty chill, lots of you knows and likes, a certain hesitancy, as if he wants to offer you—and himself—the benefit of the doubt. It’s his first time hosting a series, after years of producing at Fresh Air and This American Life. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

You sound very natural on the mic. And yet it can be really difficult to sound so natural. And you're really talking to somebody, when you're doing voiceover, and not just in conversation as a reporter with somebody. We get used to that. Did you run into any challenges with this? 

Jonathan Menjivar

I think it was fine. I mean, I have many years of experience as a reporter, but it's more of the years of experience as a producer. Where I have worked with a lot of people in my career who are not radio or podcast people. I've worked with a lot of print reporters. And so I've spent a lot of time translating people to the medium. Of course, I was trained at This American Life on how to do this. And I certainly do, on the mic, have a—I sound like one of the This American Life people. Sorry.

Elaine Appleton Grant

You do.

Jonathan Menjivar

But I think it's that work of being a producer. Of helping people write scripts in a way that isn’t—that there's not too much information, that things are delivered casually. And then, directing people. That training is in my head. So then I just had to do it to myself. But I also—I had producers who were directing me as well.

Elaine Appleton Grant

What do you say…I mean, you said it yourself. You sound like a This American Life guy. Which works for you, because it sounds so natural. But there are lots of people out there who are trying to sound like Ira Glass. And that criticism has been flying around for years. Is that a valid criticism of a lot of beginning hosts out there?

Jonathan Menjivar

I mean, I think the goal is always for people to sound like themselves, and the This American Life way of writing and talking is just trying to emulate conversational speech. I understand why people level that criticism. But I also think, like anything that you're doing, you gotta start somewhere, and it often starts by copying people. I mean, even me—I have worked for more than 20 years in this field, and always was trying to sound like a This American Life person. And I'm trying to do less of that now. Just even making the show, I've told people that there was like—I describe it as a kind of Hulk energy that I felt as I was making it? That in interviews and on the mic when I was tracking, I just started to feel more of me, you know? I could just kind of feel it coming into me.

But it was just the voice of the show. And my literal voice just started to come out of me more. And I think it really was being a host for the first time, where there were eight episodes I had to make, back to back to back to back, you know? And so I couldn't help but get more comfortable and get to be more like me.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Who would your dream guest be for Sound Judgment?

Jonathan Menjivar

I have so many people I want you to talk to. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Oh, well, tell me them all. 

Jonathan Menjivar

One person I thought of is B.A. Parker, who's one of the co-hosts of Code Switch. She is somebody who came in as a fellow when I was at This American Life, and was a completely original voice. B.A., from the moment she was pitching stories that This American Life, just knew who she was. And that has really carried over in a lot of the work that she's doing. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

You have worked for two people who people always mention when I say tell me a host you love. Terry Gross and Ira Glass. What do you think that it takes to become a beloved host? Or at the very least to make a podcast that brings listeners back again and again?

Jonathan Menjivar

I think it's just an ability to be deeply engaged with people. You know, I think it is so hard in an interview to—when you're thinking about what the person is saying and wondering, is this good tape or not? and also thinking about your next question—to actually be present, and listening to what the person is saying, and then figuring out how you can open the next door, you know? That's what Terry and Ira have and why they get people to say things that are completely surprising and deep and sometimes even revelations to the people themselves.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Do you feel like you did some of that in Classy?

Jonathan Menjivar

I would hope so. I mean, I'm not gonna put myself next to them. But yeah. I mean, there's at least one story in the show where somebody said like, I've never told this to anyone. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Jonathan, thank you so much for all your time, and such a thoughtful conversation and a wonderful show.

Jonathan Menjivar

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Elaine Appleton Grant

At the end of every episode, I give you a few of the many takeaways from these conversations. Here are today’s. For more, visit our blog on soundjudgmentpodcast.com. 

1. Tough topics don’t have to sound dreary or earnest. Right from the very beginning, Jonathan sets a scene that evokes joy. It makes you want to dance. In this way, he’s letting listeners know that he’s talking about class, but it’s not a lesson. You’re going to be entertained. 
2. It may be even more helpful to use humor when you’re tackling difficult topics than it is with anything else. When we add some jokes, people listen more. We can deal with the hard stuff better. Make sure you point the jokes at yourself, though, not someone else. Jonathan says Classy listeners “should feel comfortable knowing that if I'm going to criticize anyone…it's going to be me first.”
3. Classy is very revealing. We learn a lot about Jonathan’s feelings. So when you write your own scripts, what’s personal versus what’s private? Set boundaries. Know what you’re willing to share and what you’re not. 

That’s all for today. I have such a treat coming up for you in our next episode. Anna Sale of Death, Sex and Money is with me. 

Clip of Anna Sale

When I was in my hotel room getting into my sneakers and collecting the sweat bands to take to that street corner, I was like, What am I doing? Number one, is this safe? Number two, what if no one comes? Like, why am I doing this? And I did it, and it was like, actually amazing…

Elaine Appleton Grant

Also, if you liked my conversation with Jonathan, you’ll love my interview with Katie Colaneri, the senior podcast editor at New Hampshire Public Radio. We deconstructed a This American Life story. It was so good. That was episode 16; the link’s in our show notes. You’ll also find a link to Classy in the show notes, along with ways to follow Jonathan. 

If you love Sound Judgment, help us grow our show. Visit soundjudgmentpodcast.com and click on Reviews—you can give us a five-star rating that’ll go to Apple or Spotify right there in ten seconds. And leave us a review on Apple. It really makes a difference, and I’m grateful. 

Sound Judgment is produced by me, Elaine Appleton Grant. Audrey Nelson is our production assistant. Sound design and editing by Kevin Kline. Our cover art is by Sarah Edgell. Podcast management by Tina Bassir. 

I’ll be back with you soon.