“If life’s a mystery, who-dunnit?” That’s how host Scott Carter begins “Ye Gods.”
The show features conversations with actors, writers, and thinkers about the sacred, profane, and life-shaping stories. It’s both funny and thought provoking.
“Ye Gods” joins NHPR’s weekend lineup beginning Sun., April 12 at 6 a.m.. Scott Carter spoke with NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Barnett about the program.
Transcript
So if you can offer us your elevator pitch for “Ye Gods,” what is the show?
What I always say to people is what are the rules that rule you, and how did you come by them? Some people think that this is a show about religion — and sometimes it is. But more than that, it's a show about belief. So what are the events in your life that by which you formed conclusions, by which you make choices, by which you shape your life now?
Because what I think is a lot of people right now, either had very little religious training or moral training when they were growing up, or it was something that kind of turned them off. But now, in adulthood, they are sort of seeking some questions. I'm a baby boomer. And as such, my fellow baby boomers are all having to think about mortality in a way that they might have avoided thinking about 10, 20, 30 years ago. And so you begin to ask what George Saunders refers to as the “big Russian novel kinds of questions”: Why are we here? How are we supposed to be?
So, Scott, you yourself are a veteran comedy writer and producer. What was your inspiration for a show that is sometimes, but not necessarily, funny?
I've always found that combining the ability to be funny with the ability to be serious makes both sides of the conversation more interesting. I was a stand-up for many years before I became a television writer. And I was a writer for a couple of years before I became a television producer. So my world kind of goes back and forth between very serious — I mean, I've had shows with presidents of the United States, with Nobel Prize winners, Oscar winners, comics and so on. And so this range of guests makes each show more interesting.
My goal is that listeners get some ideas to consider for ways that they might approach life. And if they keep listening, they will get numerous different considerations. Some of them are contradictory and some of them overlap.
Do you have a dream guest?
I have a sense of the next person I would like to talk to: Barack Obama. Because I feel like he takes things incredibly seriously, doesn't do that much media now that he's left the White House and I find him interesting.
Also he went to Columbia. My younger brother was a student at Columbia, and he and I shared an apartment in New York, and so I would often sit in on my brother's Shakespeare classes. Obama has written about taking a Shakespeare class from this professor and how life changing it was, and I would love to talk to him about that. Because I think sometimes that we are in a Shakespearean drama right now. And that we have a sense of monumental things occurring, sometimes at an accelerated speed, that challenges our inability to take all of the events in and make sense of them.
