Vermont Public’s show Homegoings recently wrapped its second season.
Broadly speaking, it's a podcast and live event series about art and race that provides space to deeply explore anti-racist work.
Morning Edition host Jenn Jarecki recently sat down with Homegoings host and executive producer Myra Flynn. She started by asking if her vision for season two changed as the Homegoings team started diving into episodes. This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
A note: This conversation mentions sexual abuse.
Myra Flynn: The vision for the season is always pretty well laid out ahead of the season launch. You know, if you listen to Homegoings, you know that we kind of take these big overarching themes that are pretty zoomed out, and then we zoom in with like two or three people that we'll chat with.
Some things that did shift, for some reason, like, a lot of abuse came up this season. That wasn't something that I sought out in people's stories, that was something that just ended up coming up. So I kind of spread that out a little bit so that each one could have its own special time where folks can really deeply listen to what's gone on with that story without conflating them all, seasonally, with hard stories. Do you know what I mean? Those deserve their own highlighted moment in the arc of a season.
Jenn Jarecki: Homegoings has this ability to handle really challenging subjects, like really dark, personal things, but with a degree of openness and light. How do you strike that balance?
Myra Flynn: I think the way I strike that balance as the executive producer and the host is that I'm a woman of color and so, like, what you're describing is just how I wake up and live every day.
If I were to be taken down by hard topics, for instance, and just fall into my bed, into a deep depression, nothing would get done. Yet, as a person of color, you look around and there's so much to grieve. Kind of as a result of life being harder, you are able to have difficult conversations, in my opinion, much more easily than a lot of folks who aren't experiencing the same lived experience as you.
The goal is to be of use to these subjects that never get talked about. So while they are also difficult, they are also hidden. These are, like, really hidden subjects to talk about. What's really going on in the music industry for Black women — nobody's talking about that, and they're just starting to now, right?
And the ultimate goal of this show is to create a culture of anti-racism by way of audio, by way of storytelling, by way of music and art sometimes. And if that is to be achieved, then we all need to get comfortable with being a little uncomfortable.
Jenn Jarecki: OK, so speaking of that, you just alluded to “Stories from the spotlight,” a two-part series within this season about stories from women in the music industry. It includes a really powerful story of your own. I wonder, is that something you'd be open to talking a little bit more about?
Myra Flynn: When it came to this episode, “Surviving the spotlight as a woman of color," it talks specifically about the music industry — the amount of abuse that goes on, from sexual to physical to, you know, violence, all in the name of like, "We're going to make you a star, if you only do these things."
That was my experience. I was signed to my first record label when I was 16. I decided to confront my manager from that time in New York City, who was not the person who was doing the assaulting, but he was responsible for getting me from place to place and studio to studio, and dropping me off with these strange men who I'd never known and never met, and this is where those things happened, and I just kept silent about it.
There's so much that's coming out now about Black women and how we have just categorically been so severely under-protected. It felt like the right time to tell my story, and why not do it in my own show, in a place where I'm constantly asking other people for their deep levels of vulnerability. I felt like I should offer the same.
Jenn Jarecki: OK, Myra, so when you're making an episode, who do you imagine will listen to it, and how does that impact your process?
Myra Flynn: I think about my daughter a lot. You know, whatever assuredness I might be able to provide her as her mother, that the country is getting better, so I'm making it for, and with, anybody who cares about that mission.
You know, I really want this to be a place where white people can come and be a fly on the wall and be privy to some pretty spectacularly vulnerable conversation. That they are invited to witness and not feel shame. White people really do still hold the mantle for change. You know, they are able to make change a lot easier than the rest of us.
And then I make it for the exhausted Black person, who is really sick of only hearing about anybody who looks like them, or lives like them, in these horrible tragic ways. Like when somebody is murdered and then it's just played on air ad nauseam, and that's all anybody knows. We are so much more, and also we end up having to be the experts in situations where we are also the victims. And so it's just not appropriate.
Jenn Jarecki: Myra, with whatever you're able to tease, what can we expect for season three?
Myra Flynn: I'm not sure. I think we can expect some reshaping of how we've done episodes in the past. You know, I did this really amazing and exclusive interview with the R&B singer Tweet. He was one of the singers in the band Next, which had that song Too Close. Do you remember it?
Jenn Jarecki: Will you sing it a little?
Myra Flynn: “Baby when we're grinding/ I get so excited.” OK, you know it, you know it. I don't think you need me to sing anymore, all right.
But, the point being, this is such a hyper-sexualized song, but behind the scenes, he was getting sexually abused by a woman in the music industry. So we have this juxtaposition of a man who, night after night, has to go on stage and, like, as he puts it, gyrate and take off his shirt and maintain a six-pack and do all these things, and then these horrific things that are happening behind the scenes, which I won't spoil, but like, to say, this was all so he could keep his rent, like, to keep a roof over his head.
I'm also really interested in DEI, the boom/bust of it. You know, I've been following a story that's been happening locally here for a while now, and actually pitched it to This American Life, which is great, and they took me up on it. So I'll be making an episode with This American Life, and hoping to drop that also into season three.
We haven't touched on ableism and, you know, the Black body, especially when the Black body is required to show up in so many strong and brutish ways. What's it like to talk to somebody who's disabled and Black. Somebody who I've been chatting with, who's gone from like a stripper to a professional guru for women, and just has the coolest story. So yeah, that's like, that's that's more than a tease.
Connect with Homegoings here or wherever you get your podcasts and stay tuned for season three in early 2025.
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