The Series

Tell me about the show.

Riley McCarthy: 1001 Days is an exploration of the subtle, quiet, absurd moments that largely comprised a span of time that will mostly be remembered for its massive, inescapable, world consuming stories of tragedy. We live in a culture that romanticizes and dramatizes shared experiences of catastrophe, often while we are still in the process of experiencing them. While history may catalog the COVID-19 pandemic as a series of dramatic, planet-wide tragic losses and heroic victories, the day-to-day reality for most of us was something far more banal, ridiculous, and complicated. That’s what we are interested in with this project. We wanted to hear about the day-to-day experiences of regular people, how they survived, what they went through and how it changed them.

Violet Eileen: Yes, and Riley spent the summer talking to these people about their pandemic experiences. I’m pretty certain the significance of the past several years will be made more tangible for anyone who gives this series a bit of their time.

How would you say that in under ten words?

RM: Storytellers telling their stories from a very difficult time.

VE: Ten words each? How about “A talk show. The rest is up to you”?

How did you come up with the concept?

RM: That was all Violet. I can't be bothered to come up with new ideas these days. 

VE: (Laughs) Well, I wouldn’t have thought to do this particular idea this particular way without Riley. But I knew there was ground to break here and it needed the right host, lest it become just another talk podcast. I knew if they hosted we could take it into a lot of different directions at once and remain cohesive, because their comedy operates on many different levels at once all the time—always very responsive to the people in the room.

What distinguishes 1001 Days from other podcasts?

RM: The narrative element of this work I think is very unique. We’ve structured these interviews in such a way to give comedians, who are trained storytellers, a space to practice storytelling without the pressure of needing to have a comedic beat every 15 seconds. Sure there are a lot of serious podcasts that have comedians on to talk about serious things, but not in a way that prioritizes the comedians’ own story and how they want to tell it. 

VE: Also, more than most podcasts, we’ve taken advantage of the limitations of an audio-only format.

RM: Also the runtime! In a world full of people putting minimal effort into hundreds of hours of podcast material, we are putting six months of fastidious labor into one polished little piece. 

How did this project begin?

RM: Violet was a regular at the restaurant I work at and had come to a couple of my stand up shows. One day he pitched the project to me, apropos of absolutely nothing. I was struck by how thoughtful and unique the idea was. I could immediately tell Violet and I shared a similar view on storytelling as a medium, on the importance of the small potent details over the sweeping grand ones. That's what initially hooked me on board. 

Also I have trouble saying “no” to people. It's something I'm working on in therapy. 

VE: (Laughs) That explains it then! So I’ve been feeding off your weakness for six months now? Feels powerful. Anyway,I still can’t believe I had the guts to ask. 

Why comedians?

RM: We wanted our participants to be regular working class people, but also experienced story tellers. All of the comics on this series have day jobs. We weren’t interested in hearing from people who are selling out arenas or regularly appearing in network sitcoms. Also, they’re my friends. They’re the people whose stories I most wanted to hear and whose stories I most wanted to share. This is not a podcast about comedy or what it's like to be a comedian, there are far too many of those already.

VE: In many instances, Riley was reconnecting with friends for the first time during the pandemic. And without question the series shows this became a kind of journey for everyone involved, after all this upheaval, to reorient ourselves—to reclaim our true north.

Portland

Is 1001 Days a "Portland podcast"?

RM: No.

VE: It’s a Portland podcast only in the sense Exile on Main St. is a French Riviera album or SCTV was a Toronto show. Which is to say it’s definitely enriched by a location that is not a media center, but defining the content by its geographic location would be reductive. 

What was it like living in Portland the first year of the pandemic?

RM: Hectic as a motherfucker, and very surreal. As a line cook I was suddenly deemed an essential worker—or expendable, depending on how you chose to view it—and had to bike downtown everyday to work in my restaurant. Depending on the day, I would be biking through streets that were filled with homeland security officers, wildfire smoke, tear gas, or at times were completely abandoned depending on the day.

VE: It was definitely amusing to find myself an avatar of everything that was apparently wrong in America by virtue of my zip code. But that was all media. 

How did Portland make its imprint on 1001 Days?

RM: I hate when people say things like “New York was almost a character in the movie.'' Having a really well depicted setting doesn't suddenly make the setting a character. That's like saying “the burgers at this restaurant are so good it's almost like they’re milkshakes!”

Portland was the setting for much—approximately 71.42%—of this project, and in my opinion it wasn't anything more than that. Some of these stories take place in Richmond, Virginia, Seattle, LA, but all of them have something universal and deeply relatable at their core. 

How would 1001 Days have been different if you made it in another city?

RM: If we had made 1001 days in Duluth Minnesota, our participants would have most likely referred to soda as “pop” and water fountains as “bubblers” 

Future

Where is live comedy heading into 2023?

RM: I have gotten the sense that both audiences and performers have developed a new and deep sense of gratitude for the medium of stand-up comedy after essentially losing it in 2020. I think this makes for a lot of comedy rooms with absolutely impeccable vibes. I’ve noticed audiences being more attentive, and comedians being more earnest and vulnerable with their material. I'm not sure if this is going on everywhere, but I hope it is, and I hope it lasts for a long time.

VE: One-hundred percent. From the audience’s perspective where I sit, a good show can feel like a much more significant experience than before the pandemic. I think this is because the pandemic revealed the political in the personal in a way that, if a comedian is authentic, the kind of insight shared on stage is going to ripple beyond its subject, whether that be dating or work or drugs or sports fandom. As my favorite group said, “stakes is high.”

What have you learned by working on this project?

RM: As we were gathering for these interviews, a strong theme of what I'm calling “optimistic nihilism” began to emerge. The idea that the world is almost irreconcilably fucked up and nothing matters, so why not focus on what you have directly in front of you and not sweat the other stuff. You have the choice to either let the meaninglessness of the universe make you more bitter, selfish, and cruel, or make you softer, more patient, and kind. Every person we have interviewed has taken that latter option.

VE: Yes, it’s like the pandemic didn’t signify a change in normalcy—or an improvement or worsening of our shared conditions. The pandemic has only lifted the scales from a lot of people’s eyes, including my own. And the desperation, heroism, cruelty, strength, ignorance, and absurdity were always there at exactly the same levels the pandemic revealed. This may sound like a net bummer. But it’s actually an entirely constructive development. “Truth-beauty”, as someone once called it. 

No social media?

RM: Meh, maybe. I’ve always been kind of a luddite and somehow I'm the more social media inclined of the two of us. We’ll get good at that part of the process by the time we get around to making another one of these.

VE: Or maybe we don’t have to get better by the next time? Social media is so pre-pandemic. Maybe by the next project everyone will have caught up with us. ❀