The Mother Jones Podcast
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
David Byrne Rode His Bike to Our Office and Talked About Everything
30 minutes Posted Dec 5, 2018 at 3:00 am.
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On this week's show, host Jamilah King interviews the prolific artist, David Byrne about police shootings, Janelle Monáe, stage fright, “True Stories,” and fake news. Since the late-1970s, when Byrne formed Talking Heads, his career has been an endless stream of fascinating side projects, starting with his super-weird, super-cool Brian Eno collab, "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts." He founded his own World Music label, and his obsession with the National Color Guard Championships led to a documentary, "Contemporary Color." In November, as his American Utopia tour wrapped up, Byrne re-released his 1986 film, True Stories, which explores the inner lives and outer quirks of residents of a fictional Texas town. “It’s like 60 Minutes on acid,” Byrne once said. The timing was brilliant—but coincidental, he admits: “I hadn’t looked at it in a while. And a lot of it does seem prescient and newly relevant. There’s a lot of stuff that seems oddly like, ‘Oh. I recognize this! It seemed like fiction in the movie, and now it’s fact.’” Our interview with Byrne kicks off a month-long special holiday series, featuring some of our very most interesting studio interviews.