Jesse Eisenberg, Bill Gates, Instrumental

There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here, and maybe how to head them off at the pass?

That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts. Now streaming Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh takes command. Gather your people.

You are going to need every one of them. In Section 31, a new Star Trek original movie on Paramount Plus. Section 31 is just a place for people to bend the rules. Starfleet is here to make sure no one commits murder.

What a cute idea. This is chaos. Let's get messy. Don't miss Star Trek Section 31.

Now streaming exclusively on Paramount Plus. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday Morning. It's fair to say few Americans in recent decades have had more impact on our lives than Bill Gates. As co-founder of Microsoft, Gates spearheaded the rise of the personal computer, turning Microsoft into one of the world's most influential corporations, and in the process, became one of the world's richest and most philanthropic people. This morning, Bill Gates is looking back and taking stock with our Lee Cowan. Long before he was a billionaire, Bill Gates was a dumpster diver. He and a young Paul Allen were learning from computer code that was trashed by other engineers.

Yeah, they'd throw the coffee grounds and everything in the same garbage, but it was well worth it. Paul was taller, so he got to hold me while I did the diving. Later this Sunday morning, Bill Gates talks about his source code, what made him, him. As for our David Pogue, he opens his ears to some inventive new musical instruments and the memorable sounds they can give us. The Grammys honor what our finest musicians do with their instruments. But shouldn't someone honor the inventors of the musical instruments themselves? If someone thinks it's an instrument, we want to have a look at it.

So it's really in the eyes of the creator. A competition for new musical instruments, coming up on Sunday morning. As an actor, writer and director, Jesse Eisenberg is a Hollywood heavyweight. He'll talk with Tracy Smith. Did you not see how nervous I was? No, I did. I just thought that was you.

Jesse Eisenberg's new movie got him an Oscar nod, and you'd think he'd be happy. Are you able to enjoy moments like this? Oh, no. I'm not really wired to enjoy praise. I somehow morph it into something, you know, bad in my head.

I don't know why. This is the real test. Keeping company with the miserable genius Jesse Eisenberg, later on Sunday morning. Great. Also ahead on this Sunday morning, in honor of tonight's Grammys here on CBS, Michelle Miller talks with Suzanne DePass, the trailblazing executive who helped launch the careers of the Jackson 5, Lionel Richie and the Commodores, and others. Seth Doan will take us to the Mille Miglia, a legendary Italian road rally that's considered the most beautiful race in the world. A salute to late photographer-activist Corky Lee. And more on this Groundhog Day, the first Sunday morning of the new month, February 2nd, 2025.

We'll be right back. There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here, and maybe how to head them off at the pass?

That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts. With a net worth estimated north of $100 billion, Bill Gates is taking time out for a look back at a most uncommon life. He's talking with Lee Cowan. Uh, Mr. Gates, I'm Dr. Leonard Hofstadter. We've actually met before. Bill Gates may not strike you as an actor, certainly not a comedic one. I mean, ever since I was a little kid, I've looked up to you like a hero.

But he can be a funny guy. Would you like a tissue? How about a hug?

How about a tissue? Even when he was arrested at the age of 21, his smile makes you think there was a lot more going on in that head than just computer calculations. It was driving from Albuquerque up to Seattle, and I got three very serious speeding tickets. You got three? Yeah. On that one trip? On that one trip.

That's a long trip. This is great. I love this little car.

Yeah, these are pretty nice. We were relieved to learn that the top speed of his all-new, all-electric Fiat Red was only about 100 miles an hour. That car was a birthday gift from Bono. Yep, that Bono, as if there's any other. Well, we've been working together on this global health stuff for a long time. These days he's known largely for his philanthropic work, especially on global health issues. To date, the Gates Foundation has given away nearly $80 billion in grants.

Most of that from Gates and his former wife Melinda's own pocket. But for most of us, he'll always be the Microsoft guy. This is my last keynote. Even though he stepped down as CEO a quarter century ago.

The one thing that really held me back was what if I leave and the company's doing very poorly, A, I'll feel bad and B, I won't know whether to jump back in or not. But fortunately, I've never had to even think about it because my successors have been amazing. He was the boy wonder, the Harvard dropout and became a billionaire in his 30s by focusing not on building computers, but selling the software that ran them. Please welcome Bill Gates and the Bill Gates Dancers. By the time he launched Windows 95, he was on top of the world. He had every right to be dancing to the Rolling Stones and yucking it up with the likes of Jay Leno.

Windows 95 is so easy, even a talk show host can figure it out. But on this day, as he drove us to his favorite drive-in, Burger Master, a Seattle institution. Hey, how's it going? Great. All right, welcome to the start for you.

It seemed less like one of the world's richest men. We're here to go. What do you think? For here to be on a tray on the window.

Yeah, we'll do the tray on the window. And more like the kid who just used to come here with his dad. Decades before he'd be calling sports heroes, rock stars and world dignitaries, his friends. My social skills were very slow to develop.

So except for a few boys similar to me, I didn't have that many friends. He's not saying that for sympathy, he's just being analytical. It's the way his mind works. And it's the way the first of his three-part autobiography is written.

Here is the setup, the source code that, you know, almost certainly was going to lead to some pretty amazing impact. Bill Gates knew he was different. So did his parents. So did his teachers.

Had he been growing up today, he says he likely would have been diagnosed as autistic. Well, when I'm concentrating, I'll actually sometimes start rocking, which bothers people without my even, you know, sort of being aware of it. But I haven't even outgrown that type of behavior. Is the rocking kind of a soothing thing? Is it something you just do to concentrate? It must be.

I mean, it's a habit. I mean, they did put me on a rocking horse to help me go to sleep. They put me in a cradle.

So it's definitely their fault. Whether he is or isn't on the spectrum matters little, he says. I mean, even today, there's not like some magic medicine that gets rid of the bad part and let you keep the good part. He writes that his parents took him to therapy, sent him to private school and tried to unglue him from his books by getting him into sports, like skiing, even football. I was forced to. Now, that was on, there were three teams. There was the varsity, the JV, and then even below JV. And so we were the lowest tier.

And amongst that third tier, I was semi-decent. And that's all that can be said. Almost everything he viewed through the prism of mathematics. As you talk about math and being good at math and how that kind of revealed all these hidden structures in life and gave all the chaos of the world a certain amount of order, which if you're like me, who's not good at math, all I see is sometimes chaos. I don't see the patterns.

I don't see the structures. Well, you know, I think science is a beautiful thing, you know, physics, chemistry, biology. The more you learn, the more kind of the pieces fit together because all these topics connect. You're called a genius.

And I will, well, no, I don't think that embarrassed you at all. They call you a genius. In conversation 40 years ago with our own Jay and Polly, the then William Gates the third, made it clear he was in charge of his destiny. I'm used to having a company where the ideas that I have are something that I can easily pursue. Are you competitive, you think? Yes, people would say I'm competitive.

Yes, definitely. I mean, there was an industry panel once where everybody was disagreeing with me. And at the end of the panel, one of the competitors says, look, Bill is wrong. Bill works so much harder than we do. He's going to succeed.

We might as well just give in. You don't get to be part of that 1% club without making a few enemies along the way. He is a complicated guy.

Forcing us to divorce the internet from our operating system would be like requiring one of the automakers to sell cars without car stereos. Some say he was ruthless in his business practices. And there are plenty of charges that today is just part of a new American oligarchy. You write in the book about how you said when you first came here as a freshman that you were like a kid in a candy store. How come? There were glimpses of his determination even as a freshman at Harvard. My room was this one here on the first floor. He almost got kicked out for breaking the rules in the computer lab. It turned out I had used by far the most computer time. And so they were like, well, what are you doing? You know, you're an undergraduate.

What the heck? Great to see you. Yeah, it's impressive you're here. His computer science professor, Harry Lewis, remembers him well. Years ago, he dug out the original code that Gates started writing over Christmas break in 1974. This was a work of beauty. Those pages of basic interpreter code became the Bible of the software revolution. The 69-year-old Gates says he's made plenty of mistakes, including meeting with financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Although the tabloids had a field day with his divorce, he now says that was one of his life's biggest regrets. You know, when I was a student, you know, I was just trying to learn a lot. I was very curious.

But for every critic, how do you decide what to work on if somebody has gone through many stages of their career? There are just as many, like these students at Harvard, who speak of Bill Gates in the same breath as Thomas Edison. Hey, you finished yours. You did well. I almost finished mine. And I got a double. Like his burger, sometimes Bill Gates has bitten off more than he can chew in his life. Maybe it was a way to challenge himself, even in the face of those who still want to challenge him.

I've been unbelievably lucky and led a very interesting life. It's not stopping. David Pogue, this Grammy Sunday is on the musical hunt for a brand new sound. The last new instrument to join the standard orchestra configuration was probably the vibraphone in the 1920s. Before that, maybe the tuba in the 1830s. But that doesn't mean musicians haven't kept inventing. Each year, we invite people from around the world to submit their latest, greatest, craziest, most innovative new musical instruments. Jason Freeman is a professor of music at Georgia Tech, which hosts the annual Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, which celebrated its 15th birthday last year. And these are students and professors and artists and engineers. Anyone else that's found some reason that all the musical instruments out there aren't really enough for them.

A lot of what's in the competition is really coming from a single artist, single musician who's trying to make that new sound. New sounds like these. And again, it's not electronic.

These are latex and air. It's called the babble table. And according to inventor Jean-Francois Laporte, it's technically a wind instrument that uses compressed air.

One day I just put a balloon in a tube, it sounds great. Cat Mustatea's team creates computer-generated singing with their dance movements. Here, it's the word alone. I realized, oh, you could put sensors on a dancer's body and that data could be anything.

But could it be language? I mean, imagine if this thing catches on and pretty soon you have combination aerobics choral practice. Anthony Dickens brought his circle guitar. There's a motorized wheel that spins around and it strikes the strings. So you can play with two hands. So you see how that's spinning.

Oh, man. Max Adé invented something called vocal cords. There's three strings that are all conductive rubber cords, stretch sensors. So as you pull on the strings, you can control how the voice is being processed. That's cool.

I wonder how much a Grammy weighs. What about the pleasantness of the sound? Some of these things sound a little weird. Many of them sound weird. We are very open-minded in the competition. Do any of these things ever go on to a post-competition life?

Yes, they do. For example, you may remember the tube-like contraption called a TalkBox, made famous by Peter Frampton in 1975. Bosco. In 2020, Bosco Conte won the contest with a smaller, more portable device.

You don't even need to know how to play. Called the electro spit. That was not your voice. No, I'm totally silent. So this sound is, you know, you hear this buzz, it goes through your neck and out of your mouth. And out of your mouth becomes a speaker. Bosco brought his invention to market.

He also returned to the Guffman competition as a judge. When people hear this is a new instrument competition, I think they think, you know, it's going to be part of the standard orchestra. Could that ever happen? Absolutely. Because this is exactly the path that each instrument that we use today took. And I'm sure there was an uproar about the piano at one time, and there's definitely an uproar about the electric guitar. All it takes is a hit record from one of these instruments, and, you know, they will become a part of our musical language forever.

Now, some of the entries may strike you as exotic. But at this point, Georgia Tech's Jason Freeman has seen it all. We had a jello piano, which was made out of jello and circuits that you could play. Jello not cello.

Jello like J-E-L-L-O jello. At the closing concert of each Guffman competition, each finalist performs a duet with a traditional instrument. And then it's time to announce the winners. It really shows what's possible when art and design and engineering and music all come together. In second place, the babble table.

And first place. And finally, the first place prize goes to vocal chords. And congratulations.

New music is born. Thank you so much. Oh my God. Wow. Thank you. It's Sunday morning on CBS, and here again is Jane Pauley. As America looks forward to tonight's Grammys, Michelle Miller introduces us to Suzanne DePass, whose storied career in the music business begins with the Jackson 5.

Suzanne DePass, this is your life. Right. I mean.

Well, you know, I had no place else to put the stuff. And this is what she calls stuff. Gold and platinum albums.

Snapshots with Stevie Wonder and a young Michael Jackson. The screenplay she co-wrote for Lady Sings the Blues and her 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction award. They misspelled your name. Of course.

It happens all the time. Because what happens is people say, well, our font doesn't have a lowercase D. Suzanne DePass is a giant in the music and entertainment industry, a trailblazing executive who moved Motown from Hitsville to Hollywood. She did it with raw talent and relentless determination. I had so many wonderful things to do, and they were all hard. And they were all new, learning, making mistakes, getting my butt kicked, crying, tears of frustration, not sadness.

And little by little, I got my legs up under me. Born in Harlem and nurtured in the historic black community of Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, DePass says a supportive family gave her the tools to succeed. What were the lessons you learned from them?

I think more than lessons, it was values. By 19, she left college to book performers at the Cheetah Club in Manhattan. Her friend Cindy Birdsong had just joined the Supremes and introduced her to her boss, Motown founder Barry Gordy, who hired DePass as his creative assistant. When he decided that I should come to the company, I asked for a contract. He said, I don't do contracts, and I was there for 21 years without one on a handshake. Part of her job was to find new talent, and that's what she did.

When DePass first heard about a group of brothers from Gary, Indiana, they called themselves the Jackson 5. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. They were great. The hair literally stood up. The hair.

This is my big barometer back there. Back there. Not the ear. Not the ear. The hair.

You can feel something, it's not intellectual at all. Finally said, oh my gosh, Mr. Gordy, I saw this great act. He said, great. I said, wait till you see these kids. He said, kids. Kids.

I don't want any kid acts, are you crazy? She wasn't. And Motown introduced the Jackson 5 to the world. DePass took them to the dentist, worked on their early dance moves. She even picked out their wardrobe. Where did you find that hat? On 8th Street in Greenwich Village.

It was iconic, but nobody knew it at the time. In the 1970s, she was discovering and developing artists for Motown in L.A., signing the Commodores. I like the way you come on your hair, and I like the stars from your hair. DeBarge. She's a very kinky girl, the kind you don't take home to mother. Rick James. She will never let you fear his power.

I feel like I'm lucky to be alive. Why do you say that? Because Rick was bigger than life. He was a great consumer of drugs and just a brilliant, brilliant artist. It is a notorious business and difficult to navigate, especially back then, especially for her. You weren't just a woman, you were a black woman. Are you saying you faced things coming at you, sexism, racism? I have had every ism to deal with from ageism young to ageism old, sexism, racism, pessimism, optimism.

What I found is that the moment you let yourself be defined by your isms is when you've lost. DePass always persevered. She was also a good persuader, convincing Diana Ross that the song I'm Coming Out would be a smash hit. When she first heard it, what was her reaction?

She says in very blatant terms, I hate these songs. But you knew it would be a hit? I felt it would be. Nobody knows. That's the thing about it.

Nobody knows. But clearly you have really good... I believe in what I believe in and some of it works and some of it doesn't.

But I'm happy to say I have a good percentage. In 1982, DePass was made president of Motown Productions. One of her first big projects, the TV special, Motown 25, yesterday, today, forever. Nearly 50 million people watched Michael Jackson do this. The first time you saw that moonwalk, what was your reaction?

Oh my God. And it was only six seconds. But the whole Billie Jean of it all was just magic. Why was it magic? I think because nobody had ever seen anything like that before. She also produced the landmark miniseries, Lonesome Dove. A lot of people would ask, what does Motown know about westerns?

Probably nothing, but I did. I think the death of art is that you have to be gay to play gay. I think the death of art is that you have to be black to direct or write a black movie. The death of art is to not have the best person do what it is they are well suited and passionate to do, regardless of all that other exterior stuff.

And I am sick of it. At 78, she's still listening to her ear and gut, finding new opportunities and stories to tell. And with her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Susanna Pass is recognized as a true pioneer. I am so grateful to have had that moment to really feel that energy coming back to me. You know, I will also say I have worked really, really hard. For someone who worked behind the scenes and in the shadows, you felt seen.

Oh, definitely. I felt very seen and very blessed. We're off on a Sunday drive, and not just anywhere, in Italy, where we join Seth Doan at the most beautiful car race in the world. This father-son duo came from California to race this tiny 1957 Fiat on the back roads of Italy, a graduation celebration for the classic car-obsessed David Ealy. He and his dad Len set off among almost a hundred others, practicing for a stunningly scenic race, with roots stretching back nearly a century. Their car was the first off the starting line in 1957.

That was how this started, was he emailed me the newsreel and said, Joe owns this, we could do the Mule, and it was kind of like, oh. Their friend Joe Hurwich bought this Fiat specifically to race in the Miele Miele. Miele means thousand in Italian, and Miele is miles. This thousand-mile race of classic cars on open roads goes from Brescia to Rome and back over five days. It's the great race. What makes this the great race? Enzo Ferrari called it the most beautiful race in the world, and we're here to find out if that's true. This most beautiful race in the world began in 1927, and pausing for the war continued until a terrible crash in 1957 killed two drivers and nine spectators, a tragedy dramatized in the 2023 film, Ferrari.

It's been back since the late 70s as a follow the speed limit rally of precise timed trials. Last year, more than 400 classic and vintage cars were accepted, including that Fiat 600 the Ely's drove, and another car their friend Joe Hurwich bought, this 1931 Aston Martin. You buy a car, or in your case, cars to get in. It's not the person that gets in, it's the car.

The car has to be either the original car that ran in the race between 1927 and 1957, or it has to be the same model of a car that ran in the race. It's Hurwich's fifth Mille Miglia after trying to get in for a decade. It's a bit of an obsession, this. You sound like my wife.

We understood better while out for a spin. Maybe a little further, if you don't mind, it's kind of fun. You mean you might get hooked? I might get hooked.

The non-par guy? I'm going to need a new job to get really hooked. The race was passing through villages just on your doorstep. Growing up in Brescia, Francesca Perroline was raised on the Mille Miglia. So make sure you check the next page.

Now she's the COO helping to run it. And the cars being raised could be your daily car. But it's not exactly daily cars being raced today.

What do you say to someone who says this all just feels out of touch with the world today, kind of underlines the inequality in the world? Well of course some of the cars are expensive, but the secret of Mille Miglia is that it's a celebration of our history, and everyone can be part of. We have spectators on the road, they don't have to pay. And after all, you can take part into the Mille Miglia with the Fiat 600. We don't need a $20 million car.

Cars cannot have any major modifications and need to be properly restored. We spoke near where they're checked and certified to race. Mille Miglia is by now the largest motorsport event in the world. Largest motorsport event in the world? It is. You think of Formula 1?

No, no. We have more cars, we have more mice, we have more spectators on the road. It's that dream of, if you've watched the Mille Miglia, you know, you're standing in the street and you're seeing these cars going by, and you think, oh gosh, I'd love to do that.

Well this actually makes it possible. Debbie Travis, a British-Canadian TV personality, and her car-loving husband, Hans Rosenstein, have a villa in Tuscany not far from where the Mille Miglia passes by. Now they host a week-long Mille Miglia-inspired classic car rally retreat for tourists, including Jim and J.C. Germani, who came from Austerville, Massachusetts. The Ferrari, I've been wanting to drive that car ever since I was seven years old. And what's better than driving a Ferrari through Italy? It's a bit like being in kindergarten, I have to say to people, no, you've been in the Borgatti once, you have to do this. So, you know, they get to drive usually two or three cars a day, so they're swapping as we go along with pit stops. They wind along picturesque roads, including nearby Pienza. The hardest thing for the driver is the scenery, it's so breathtaking, you know, but they've got to keep their eyes on the road. Back in Brescia, eyes are on these cars as they turn the streets into an open-air museum. Jack Brummall and Lisa Barrow first did a test run at a scaled-back Mille Miglia rally in the U.S. This one is more intense.

We're still married, so that's good. Check in again in about a week. A friend from the U.S. helped them borrow this 1955 Alfa Romeo. And where can you go and walk down the street and see half a dozen Bugattis and four going Mercedes all being driven, right? It's the neatest dynamic car show ever. That's a big part of this, these cars are not sitting, they're not under lights, they're on the road. These are not cars that are maintained in someone's elegant garage at home. I like that element of it, that the cars are driven. And they're driven hard, they're driven like they were meant to be in the day. This journey is also a test of driver's endurance in these old cars, often without much protection from the elements.

Over the thousand miles, Jack Brummall and Lisa Barrow did remain married. We saw Joe Hurwich passing through Rome in his Aston Martin, accomplishing the same goal that David and Len Ealy set. We're just going to have fun, our goal is to finish. Finish they did, a test of mechanics, will, and despite cheering fans lining the roads, humility. I mean, the Italians love the car, it's amazing, you know.

They don't care about us, which is perfectly fine, the car is the star. Actor Jesse Eisenberg received an Academy Award nomination for his performance in The Social Network. He's just received another Oscar nod for the film A Real Pain, a movie he wrote, directed, and stars in.

Tracy Smith launches this year's Sunday morning look ahead to the Oscars. So can you appreciate a good Jewish deli? I can.

We'll tell you up front, actor, director, writer Jesse Eisenberg is a different kind of movie star. Hi, how are you? Can we get a slice of the babka chocolate? We joined him at the legendary Cantor's Deli in Los Angeles and shared some chocolate babka with a dill pickle chaser.

This is the real test. All right, yeah. It's great. I love the pickle and babka combination, excuse me. I know. Okay, it was a little unusual.

I have to do the pickle and babka combination here. But for Jesse Eisenberg, it had already been a pretty unusual day. And for original screenplay, the nominees are.

Just a few hours earlier, this happened. A Real Pain, written by Jesse Eisenberg. It was his second Oscar nod and he was mortified. Are you able to enjoy moments like this? Oh, no, I'm not really wired to enjoy praise.

I don't know why. I think it just triggers some guilt response in my brain and I try to find something to be miserable about. But I'll tell you what I do love. I love actually doing my job. I feel so lucky that I found something I like to do. At the moment, his job is to promote the film he wrote, directed, and starred in, A Real Pain, co-starring Kieran Culkin. Devers and I are cousins.

We were born three weeks apart, which is kind of nuts. The film is about two cousins who travel to Poland to see their ancestral home and visit the actual home of their late grandmother, who barely survived the Holocaust. We shouldn't have to pay for train tickets in Poland. This is our country. No, it's not. It was our country.

They kicked us out because they thought we were cheap. The film started out as a buddy movie about a trip to Mongolia. But as he was writing the script, Eisenberg got stuck. Benji, maybe she wants to be alone.

No one wants to be alone, Dave. Okay, I'm going to check it out. Until inspiration literally popped up on his computer. I was like 30 pages into the script, and something was missing, like I knew the script was not going well. And so I'm kind of like banging my head against the keyboard, and an ad pops up online for Auschwitz Tours, and then in parentheses, with lunch. And I was like, Auschwitz Tours with lunch? That's like the strangest pairing of four words I've ever seen. And once I saw that, and once I read that brochure, I was like, oh, that's the movie. That is so interesting.

I was trying to deal with these two characters who were both kind of like in pain in their own ways. Dude, we are Jews on a train in Poland. Think about it. Benji.

Benji. I mean, does no one else see the irony here? Like eating fancy food and sitting up here when 80 years ago we would have been herded into the backs of these things like cattle. Jesse Eisenberg has had those same thoughts. He is himself of Polish lineage, and he has relatives who were victims of the Holocaust.

What were the questions you were trying to address? You know, I come from a family who survived the war, a lot of, you know, cousins, aunts and uncles who didn't, and yet I walk around New York City like kind of miserable. Like I'm not like a happy person. I'm not asking for pity or anything. I'm just recognizing objectively like I'm not a happy person. And yet I come from people who survived through miracles. You know, intellectually I think I should be waking up every morning kissing the dirt that I'm here by virtue of a thousand miracles. And instead I walk around like, Oh my God, what am I going to do today?

Oh my God, I shouldn't drink a coffee because then I'll peak at noon. And so I'm constantly trying to reconcile my fortunate life with how I feel about things and my forebearers very unfortunate lives and how they appreciated things. And that's what this movie is kind of focusing on. Did you not see how nervous I was? No, I did. I just thought that was you. It seems he's been feeling that same anxiety all his life. Raised in New Jersey, Jesse Eisenberg was, by his own admission, a sad kid who was uncomfortable at school and took refuge in acting. By 2010, he'd made a name for himself in Hollywood with roles like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. You have part of my attention.

You have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients are intellectually creatively capable of doing. Did I adequately answer your condescending question? The part earned him an Oscar nod and the juice to branch out into writing and directing. But when COVID shut down the film industry in 2020, Eisenberg and his wife, Anna Stroud, moved back to her native Indiana and spent their days volunteering at her mom's domestic violence shelter in Bloomington. Yeah, I was just volunteering every day at the at the shelter. It sounds weird to say this, and I don't mean this for any kind of it would be like the happiest time of my life. Like I, I was painting walls and fixing garbage disposals and I just loved it so much.

I love being able to like accomplish something where there was no like critique of it. You know what I mean? It makes total sense.

You fix the garbage disposal, the garbage disposal is fixed. End of it. Exactly. And what have I been telling you all night? The closer you look, the less you see. But of all the roles he's played on screen and off, he says this one, the confident illusionist in the Now You See Me movie franchise is the most challenging because it's absolutely nothing like him. Because no matter what you think you might know, we will always be one step, three steps, seven steps ahead of you. And just when you think you're catching up, that's when we'll be right behind you.

Just did the third Now You See Me. And it's such a blast and it's such a challenge because I'm doing something that's like the exact opposite of my psychology and it's the only time I ever walk away thinking I did a good job today. But that's because my character thinks that they're doing well and they're yes, they're Hollywood movies and they're really fun. But like for me, it's been a kind of like a therapy. Does that confidence linger at all past the shoots?

Yes. I will normally, it will linger through dinner. Once I get on set and I'm in those clothes and I'm speaking the way that they've written for me, I just like, I stand up straight. I'm like an inch taller. It's amazing. That's great. I can make eye contact with my father.

The third generation lives in their mother's basement and smokes pot all day. You'd think the success of A Real Pain would give Eisenberg some swagger. His movie also snagged Kieran Culkin an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. I got speed. I want to go to the bathroom. I'll get that. Are you a pickle fan?

Who? Yeah. Despite the vodka and pickles at Cantor's, Jesse Eisenberg can't seem to enjoy the sweet without just a little bit of sour. Is there a part of you that finds this whole experience with the way that A Real Pain has been received kind of unreal that at some moment you're going to wake up? Oh yeah. I assume a piano is going to fall on my head every day because I feel like I'm so lucky. The way my mind does equations is that this lucky thing must mean this horrible upcoming thing.

And so yes, I'm not walking under any air conditioners in New York City. I don't know how to think about it any other way. And that's really unfortunate but true. Just about four years ago at the height of COVID, we lost a photographer whose name might not be familiar to you, activist Corky Lee, whose work is now the subject of a book. And this Sunday morning, appreciation. Doing the honors, his brother, John Lee. My brother, Corky Lee, was a self-taught photojournalist who chronicled the Asian communities of America.

As the eldest of four sons born to Chinese immigrant parents, he grew up and worked in the family laundry business and was the first in the family to graduate college. I beat out the daily news photographer over here. Starting in the 1970s, Corky chose a camera as his tool for social change. Corky described his camera as a sword against injustice and quickly began to document, highlight, and advocate for the Asian American communities. This was from arguably the largest protest by Chinese Americans in New York City.

There's like 20,000 that came out and had to do with an incident of police brutality. He called himself the undisputed, unofficial Asian American photographer laureate. After people see my photographs, they'll basically learn something about what it is to be Asian American. It's an attempt to educate people one photograph at a time. His passion for photographic justice was sparked in his teens when he saw the iconic 1869 photograph of the completion of the transcontinental railroad that excluded Chinese workers. To pull over there with the black jacket and the black cap, you're out of the frame.

You have to pull in. In 2014, he finally corrected that injustice by recreating the same scene, this time with descendants of Chinese railroad workers and other Asian Americans whose forebears had been barred from the original photograph. For over five decades, he covered protest demonstrations, cultural celebrations, job equality, voting rights, and everyday life, recording and rediscovering Asian American history when no one else would and few news outlets cared. Gorky's photography became a catalyst for ethics studies, ensuring that the history of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans would be accurately researched, depicted, and taught.

Okay. His photography was compelling evidence that Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander descent were not eternal foreigners, but integral to American society. Gorky died in 2021 of COVID at the height of the pandemic, an infection he picked up while documenting a campaign against Asian hate crime.

He died as he lived, wielding his camera, fighting for his deeply held belief that America was at its best when it practiced diversity, equity, and inclusion of all its peoples and communities. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media, want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here and maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.