Legendary singer and activist Joan Baez still marches in protests; but she also performs in a circus, dances with drag queens and does whatever else she can to maintain a sense of joy and laughter. Baez has spent her career equally at home on the political frontlines as behind a guitar. But as the world has changed, so has how she calculates risk. She thinks if she were to be arrested now – as opposed to 58 years ago – it would be “scary in a way that I was not scared back then.” But, she tells Nicolle, “social change cannot happen until somebody’s willing to take a risk.”
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Joan Baez: In all my, whatever career, I’ve said that social change cannot happen until somebody is willing to take a risk. And I believe that. And I believe it’s going to get scarier and scarier to take a risk.
Nicolle Wallace: Hi everyone, and welcome to “The Best People” Podcast. Unfortunately for us, “The Best People” doesn’t begin to capture this week’s guest because she’s more than that. She’s an icon known the world over. Her lyrics are literally the words that have accompanied everything we associate in our country’s history with justice and change and all things good. But she’s part of our present moment as well.
This week’s guest on “The Best People” Podcast is Joan Baez. Thank you so much for being here. It’s an honor.
Joan Baez: Thank you so much for having me.
Nicolle Wallace: I love everything you’ve done, but I especially love everything you’ve said about this moment. And one thing that I changed immediately is I am never going to call anything unprecedented again. You stopped me in my tracks when I read that. And I want to go back and take that word out of everything I’ve ever said about this administration.
Will you explain though why that is no good?
Joan Baez: Unprecedented? Well, because that group of people would love to be unprecedent. I mean, at every turn–
Nicolle Wallace: It’s a compliment.
Joan Baez: That’s a next wave of horrors is unprecedented. So get used to it and drop the word. We shouldn’t be surprised by it anymore.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah, there’s this piece of the Trump story that we as journalists still don’t know how to tell. And it’s this openness, I think, we have to new information when there are no new Trump stories. It’s corruption, right? I mean, and it’s so, it’s on us, but I wonder being on the front lines with people fighting for justice and for freedom, what it feels like to watch the country do this again?
Joan Baez: Well, I was thinking of writing, it was the worst of times and it was the worst of times. Couldn’t have dreamed it up, Nicole. Nobody could have imagined it.
Nicolle Wallace: What is it about this moment that puts us at such odds with the people leading us in terms of how we view fellow humans?
Joan Baez: I don’t think anybody can figure that out really because it’s so extreme. It is so extreme. There are two tracks and for whatever it is, they can’t cross over. And I’m guilty of that. I don’t want to hear that rhetoric. I don’t want to listen to it. I don’t want to try and communicate with it. It’s all very anti-Quaker, I was raised as a Quaker, and you really are supposed to be open and loving to everybody. And I am having trouble with that right now.
Nicolle Wallace: I’m from Northern California. I went to UC Berkeley and I am starting to feel like maybe I’ll end up back there because I wonder how so many people voted for this. Do you think about that?
Joan Baez: Well, I’m concerned about my position as a, some privileged, not quite white, but a privileged person, and the temptation to just get the hell out and go somewhere that’s safer than this. And then I think probably it isn’t right to do. I’d rather, for the moment, stay here and try to take care of my gardeners because they wouldn’t have the opportunity to go someplace else.
Nicolle Wallace: I think I used to worry that it was hyperbolic to ask questions about safety, but they seem to revel in people feeling unsafe. I mean, using that as a political tool is how that side has used the question of crime. And now it feels like threatening protest and dissent is one of their tactics. And I thought it was, you’ve been arrested twice in your life, but you’ve warned about protesting being more dangerous now. Talk about that.
Well, I went to jail twice and it was all for aiding and abetting, draft resistance. But we had our lawyers we had to call, we had the families come visit, we had a medication. And right now, since the first order of the day for this group is cruelty, it’s cruelty. And don’t just put people in cages, they love putting people in cages. And that’s what makes it scary in a way that I was not scared back then. I mean, there’d been a lot of places where I should have been scared and I was just maybe too stupid, you know, but now it’s a different kind of scared.
I don’t know what to say to people, but it’s really honest to say that it’s not, I haven’t experienced anything like this in my life.
Nicolle Wallace: You’ve been at the protests, you were at the No Kings protest. You’ve talked about what you will protest for and who you will protest with, and it always is nonviolence. Do you see this moment as worse than the ’60s?
Joan Baez: This is worse. I certainly see it as worse. I wish it weren’t. I mean, I wish I could say, oh yeah, we did our work back then, we had some results. It’s the same or it’s not as bad. But for me, if you really can’t imagine, wouldn’t have imagined this back then. Somebody made this weird sci-fi movie, that this was happening. We couldn’t have dreamed it up.
Nicolle Wallace: What do you think we’re missing then in terms of a response? Because if this is worse, I mean, I went back and watched, I watched your performances at the March on Washington in 1963.
(Clip of Joan Baez singing “We Shall Overcome”)
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, I have always associated with everything I’ve ever seen from that day, but everyone was singing with you. And it doesn’t feel like we’re all singing together right now.
Joan Baez: Well, I have some theories about that. I don’t know what happens when the stars align themselves in a certain way and we have a movement, that kind of a movement. Either it was anti-war movement, there was a civil rights movement, and by the end, they were merging. But that feeling of togetherness, I remember a kid was about 16 years old, some number of years after the war was over and that, and he said, “You guys had everything back then. You had the music, you had the war, this thing you had Woodstock, you had each other. You said you had the glue and we don’t have the glue.”
And I think that people were able to experience that when Obama was running for president. When he was running and people were high-fiving each other in the subway, people I didn’t know, it was just that, that was the feeling, and we can do this together. I don’t know how you create it. I don’t know how much of it kind of just happens, but I think it will exist somewhere if we’re around that long and it’s that vital glue. And then we feel so something’s possible, whether it is or not.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, I think that’s the anatomy of the resistance. It’s feeling together and being each other’s glue because that’s the strength. And then it’s, I mean, both those moments were around extraordinary leaders. And I wonder, I’ve seen some of your comments about the Democratic leaders right now. I mean, there are so many talented ones individually. Why do you think they’ve struggled to knit us together as the glue behind them?
Joan Baez: I don’t know. All I can say that right now, we shouldn’t be too surprised when people we thought were going to speak up for us don’t because there’s a lot of fear now. I mean, we start self-censoring because of the clamping down on anything, on everything, on literature, on Anne Frank, and especially if I’m taking jabs at all of them. A couple of things that I say that I think makes some sense. And one is we may not be able to turn the tide, but we can certainly save some fishes.
The other thing I have said, and I think it’s true is denial is your friend right now. And I would suggest that we all live about 85% of the time in denial because otherwise we’ll get extremely depressed. So, and then with the other 10% or 15%, go and do something. And when you feel as though, well, I can’t do anything, it’s not enough, it’s not enough, may not be enough for you, but it’s certainly enough for the little fish that you’re advocating for or trying to take care of. It means, could mean everything to their life. So I wouldn’t moan about, it’s just me, I can’t, I’m the only one, it won’t be good enough, do it anyway. No, just do it anyway. What calls you the strongest, whether it’s immigrants, constitution, whatever, just find the place and go be active with it.
Nicolle Wallace: One other thing you said that I’ve quoted a bunch of times you quote the writer Ann Patchett, who I adore saying that “hope is a muscle.” I think, is that right?
Joan Baez: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: And that it’s not just this thing that, you know, oh, let me just call up my hope. It is a thing we have to strengthen.
Joan Baez: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: And it sounds like all those things you described, strengthen our hope muscles.
Joan Baez: Yeah, because I don’t, you know, I’ve gone through most of my life being a complete pessimist. And people say, “Oh, Ms. Baez, how do you stay being such an optimist?” I don’t want to say. No, my glass is half empty all the time because I do this stuff anyway, you know? That doesn’t get me off the hook. I have to do what I do anyway. And it’s up to me how grim I’m going to feel.
Nicolle Wallace: So someone said to me, how do you not, you know, lose your, you know, aren’t you at your wits end? And I said, yeah, I’m past that. I mean, I’m just here anyway because we just, you know, we do what we can do with or without our wits.
Joan Baez: That’s assuming we have any.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, I didn’t have any to lose.
Joan Baez: You’re thinking big.
Nicolle Wallace: Is it weird to see your life, you know, sort of replayed to a new generation in film? I know I read in interviews that you saw it. I resisted watching it because I was such a fan that I felt disloyal watching the new people. And then after the election, I actually watched it. And I said, oh, I’m so glad I watched it. I became obsessed with it. I watched it three times. And I thought, oh, we have to follow the artists. The artists are going to lead us out. And I thought it was so important that a new generation, especially in the fall last year, could see it and maybe live it through the actors that played both of you.
Joan Baez: Well, it certainly gave my visibility a big boost. I had called them and said, is there any, do you want to talk to me? I mean, I kind of was there. And so I talked to different people. I talked with Pete Seeger and told, I mean, I have great stories. I told him how Pete Seeger uses a banjo to protect himself. So all these fun things actually came out in the movie. Not, I mean, you could see him holding his, I said his banjo was there. And you say, good morning, Pete. And he’d say, I met a man in Guatemala. And he couldn’t just say, good morning.
Nicolle Wallace: Was that just a creative quirk or what was that?
Joan Baez: I think he didn’t know how to relate to a human being. So that’s, okay, thank God we wouldn’t have had that great music if he didn’t have that quirk, you know?
Nicolle Wallace: But what is it about art and artists that, is it that we cling to it so desperately at these moments or is it that the art itself is inspired by desperate moments?
Joan Baez: Well, let’s see. It’s certainly inspired by desperate moments. I think it’s also inspired periodically by beauty. I think that music is, I used to think it was the only thing that crossed all barriers and borders. And then I was working with Mercedes Sosa, brilliant and powerful singer. And I was telling her that, I said, the only thing that really crosses borders is music. She said, it’s music and food.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes. Do you have the same creative process as you write poetry that you did when you’ve written music? Does it all come from the same place?
Joan Baez: I think it kind of shifts around in there because when I stopped singing, stopped writing songs, it’s as though somebody said, okay, and they waved a little flag, next. With painting, I painted for, I think, 12 years. And then two or three years ago, I just stopped. It doesn’t mean I won’t do it again, you know? But then there’s all this other stuff and then I’m thinking you have footage of it. I joined the circus.
(Clip Playing)
Joan Baez: And I joined the circus for a number of reasons. One is I’d be able to dance, which I wanted to do my whole career, but nobody understood that. So I stood in front of a microphone for 60 years. So now I’m busting at the seams and I get to dance in the circus. It’s also for that denial, that I need that denial. I’m not going to be able to function. And also because the circus represents and is everything the administration hates.
You know, we’ve got drag, we’ve got strip, we’ve got pole dancers, we’ve got me. And we’ve got joy, we’ve got dancing, we’ve got laughter. And so it is a real refuge for me. And it’s interesting, the audience is like, oh, you know, that everybody’s waiting for that too. So I’m happy to be part of everybody’s denial for a little bit here.
Nicolle Wallace: I think denial though is, I mean, one woman’s denial is another’s compartmentalization, right? It’s the thing, right? Like it lets a lot of people function. I think all sorts of people are compartmentalizing. I mean, I think that’s my denial, that I want to believe that nobody wanted this. I want to believe the polls that say that, and I know Trump voters in California, I’m from California, when I’ll ask them, are you worried about all of your friends who are here illegally or whose families or parents are, will be deported? And they have, the denial explains a lot of the Trump voters that I know at least that, oh, he won’t do those things. See, that’s just talk. He won’t deport my friend. He won’t deport my friend because he’s a hardworking American, he’s contributing. But the truth of what he’s doing is really obliterates all of that denial. He’s doing everything he said he would do and so much more.
Joan Baez: Yeah, it was the worst of times, and it was the worst of times.
Nicolle Wallace: It was the worst of times.
Joan Baez: Go join a circus.
Nicolle Wallace: It was the worst of times, go join a circus. I think that that belongs on a T-shirt.
Joan Baez: Thank you, I like that.
Nicolle Wallace: I love it, I’ll make it, I’ll send it to you.
We are going to sneak in a quick break right here when we come back much more with legendary folk singer, activist, icon, Joan Baez. Stay right here.
(BREAK)
Nicolle Wallace: I want to ask about that experience of being in community with everyone that comes to watch the circus, right? Because that feels like the through line. They’re the people that, you weren’t just performing to people, they were in community with you. And your songs are so iconic and famous and successful that I cannot find any footage where people aren’t singing.
(Clip of Joan Baez singing “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around”)
Nicolle Wallace: But what is that through line about? That you don’t have fans that sit silently and idly to watch you. You sit in community with your fans. They are in that moment with you.
Joan Baez: The circus is traditionally non, apolitical, apolitical. But I intend to say there’s a quote from Mark Twain who says, “The people have only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”
That’s an amazing quote.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s so perfect forever, but especially now. And I think I like the things that are always right, but that I can grab onto. I cried watching all of the footage from 1963.
(Clip of Joan Baez singing)
Nicolle Wallace: And I didn’t just cry because I was so moved by you and everyone that was together. I cried because I’m so desperate for the glue. And I wonder if we’re not going to see the glue in our politics, maybe we’ll find it in the comedy, but I think Trump’s onto them too. I feel like they’re in danger too. So what does that mean? Yeah.
Joan Baez: It means I’m scared. I mean, I look at this lovely people in the circus and I think, oh God, I mean, they’re Latinos, there’s drag, there’s all that stuff and all of it. I think this engine that is rolling now is absolutely terrifying. I mean, I did Amnesty International and human rights work in Chile and Argentina, Brazil and Czechoslovakia, all the places that have been through military dictatorship. And that’s what we’re heading for. We’re almost there.
Nicolle Wallace: Are you scared for yourself?
Joan Baez: Yes, yes. I’m more scared for my kid and granddaughter. And I ask people, what do you say to your kids and your grandchildren? And they say nothing. Because why take away that dream at the moment when she’s just effervescent with the possibilities in her life and there isn’t any point in me trying to argue that away? If it comes to that, she’ll figure it out on her own.
Nicolle Wallace: I have two kids and I keep thinking maybe they will eradicate measles a second time. Maybe they’ll become doctors or health workers here. Maybe they will, I grew up when Americans went and taught other countries how to do democracy. Maybe they will be the people that teach us how to do it here.
Joan Baez: That’s how I feel about my granddaughter, yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: Right?
Joan Baez: It’s certainly, yeah, I mean, we can’t really. We’re doing everything we can, but the big walloping glue change is really going to come from another generation, I think.
Nicolle Wallace: What is the need for a new anthem. I know you have a new, “One in a Million” is the new song, right?
Joan Baez: Well, there are two. The other one is, I think you probably saw me at a demonstration. It’s “I Carried the Flame.”
(Clip of Joan Baez singing “I Carried the Flame”)
Joan Baez: I carried the flame. Let it always be said when you call out my name, I carried the flame. “We Shall Overcome” is the most beautiful protest song in my mind that’s ever written and we need something new.
Nicolle Wallace: Why?
Joan Baez: Because it’s so easy. Because it’s easy to write everybody off. They say, oh, yeah, they did that about 50 years ago. That’s done. It’s too full of nostalgia and not enough to get people moving in my mind. Not everybody agrees with that.
Nicolle Wallace: I saw you compliment Bruce Springsteen for using his platform for good.
Joan Baez: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: He’s about as big as it gets. Do you think fear explains why people underneath, and Dave Matthews is using his platform every time he speaks. There’s a handful, but you can count it on one hand. It doesn’t feel like the solidarity and the association that music had with the fight for rights and peace and freedom.
Joan Baez: A lot of the Live Aid structure, I should tease about it because I’d say, the only risk about Live Aid was not get asked.
Nicolle Wallace: To be snubbed.
Joan Baez: You’re not exactly putting your life on the line there.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Joan Baez: That’s always a question of how deeply somebody is involved. Like Pete Seeger was all the way. He’s six foot four and it was already in it over his head. Then others, a couple of them I won’t name names, but one of them really good person, multimillionaire back then and always would say, I really want to do something. I really want to do something. I want to take a risk this year. Then he never did.
Nicolle Wallace: Why?
Joan Baez: It was too scary. Too scared. I don’t know. I’ve never had that kind of money, but probably when you get in that echelon, you’re afraid of losing any of it, I think.
Nicolle Wallace: I wonder what’s happening. I’m an ex-Republican and I don’t understand why businesses don’t think they have a skin in the game of remaining a democracy. There is no autocracy in the world where the economy is thriving, none. I think if I hadn’t arrived at where I’ve arrived as an ex-Republican, I might not even be curious about this, but I’m curious why everyone thinks someone else will save our country from becoming something other than a democracy.
Joan Baez: Well, the first thing coming to my mind is one of Elon Musk’s little puppet people on TV saying, we got to get over this dictator phobia. So that’s one pocket. That’s one pocket. And it’s what’s really evolving now. People are getting over their dictator phobia. Or they didn’t even know what it was. And they won’t. I mean, if you’re neutral during this time, you can get away with your life, doing pretty much what you want to do. Just don’t cross any lines.
Nicolle Wallace: But what’s the bet that you won’t have a kid that tweets something that offends someone associated with the party in power, that you won’t have an employee who has a relative who, I mean–
Joan Baez: They’re all different. I mean, they’re all of the above you just said, and the self-censorship. Don’t let me get too grim because it’s not healthy for everybody.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s not good for anybody. So how do you beef up then the hope muscles? What do we need? What do we do? How do we juice up the other side of the equation where we think that something will glue us together, a leader will emerge, and we will be in this fight in time to save this country we love?
Joan Baez: All I can say is how I stay afloat. I have a friend, a Turkish friend, close friend. She’s been living in a dictatorship forever now. And she had the only progressive newspaper that still existed as time went by. And I called her the other day, I said, help. I said, why are you not in jail? She said, because I am very clever. I’m not that clever, but she has walked that line. But she gets very depressed, because Turkey is this wonderful place.
Nicolle Wallace: Beautiful.
Joan Baez: And it’s been diminished one thing after another. But it remains to be seen if I can be very clever.
Nicolle Wallace: I think it’s a good bet that you can be very clever.
What do you listen to? Do you still immerse yourself in music? Are there new artists that you’re drawn to?
Joan Baez: You know, it depends on what I want to do that day. This morning, I wanted to dance a little in the morning, and I put on Jimmy Cliff.
Nicolle Wallace: Nice.
Joan Baez: Of course, he is so heartbreaking to me because it’s so beautiful in a certain way. So I danced to that. And then, let’s see, I had on Renée Fleming the other day.
Nicolle Wallace: Beautiful.
Joan Baez: Because it’s so beautiful, so beautiful. And I put her on periodically. I listened to the Gypsy Kings. Somebody said, oh, the old Gypsy Kings? I said, yeah, the old Gypsy Kings. They’re the best of that music for me. I have a dance group online once a week, and we just do salsa.
Nicolle Wallace: I love it.
Joan Baez: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: My daughter likes this kid’s band called The Wiggles, and the best member is a former salsa dancer. And they just move. I mean, salsa is so sexy.
Joan Baez: Yeah. Yeah, it is.
Nicolle Wallace: What is the answer for a society in the arts? I mean, what is the best argument for saving the arts if you want to save a society? To me, this is one of the distinctions this time, that that side is pursuing the arts, that they know that too, that they’re pursuing the Kennedy Center. What are the bright spots? I mean, a lot of artists said, no, I will not perform there for him as sort of puppets for the state or artists for the state. Do you see some pulse and signs of life and things that give you hope inside the arts?
I mean, because artists are uncompromising. Most artists start out dirt poor, and then if they don’t become famous, it is their art that sustains them. Are you seeing some things that inspire you from other artists?
Joan Baez: Aside from Bruce Springsteen? I think, you know, I think I’m not waiting for somebody to be political.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Joan Baez: I think I have to do receiving the beauty of the art, like Renée. But just to me right now, it has to be the beauty and the laughter and the joy and the dancing. So, when I can support that or be that, then I do. I guess part of it is I don’t wait for much, because it may not happen.
Nicolle Wallace: And you said that these acts of joy are their own acts of defiance. So you talked about being at a drag show in Miami, talk about that.
Joan Baez: Yeah. This great drag queen breakfast in Miami. And I started dancing with one of them, she was huge. So I was just, I’m about the size of a peanut now. So I look really tiny, but I was doing this great dancing where then she kind of said, you go dance. So I went dancing along the thoroughfare, all these tables, people started stuffing dollar bills in my belt. I thought, this is what it should be. Totally spontaneous and totally dirty. You know, I had one friend, it was so horrifying. She said, what’s this going to mean to Jasmine? My granddaughter. Well, Jasmine’s the one who got me there. And then I talked to one of my clever past therapists. She said, oh, you let your inner slut out. Congratulations.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. I mean, that’s what all that anyone wants to see is Joan Baez’s inner slut.
Joan Baez: I was happy watching it.
Nicolle Wallace: My conversation with Joan Baez continues right after the break. Stay with us.
(BREAK)
Nicolle Wallace: What is it like to have so many people know of you, but I imagine you don’t want everyone to know the real you. What is it like to be famous for so long?
Joan Baez: Well, you know, what comes to my mind first is that there’s been more of the real me dancing in the circus in a sense. Then there’s a real me who does politics. There’s a real me who does the art. There’s a real me who sings. There was another story. There was a German medium. Somebody says, you got to talk to this guy. So I met him and I gave him all the appropriate, you know, whatever he needs to do his work. And he came to a concert and after the concert, he brought this big chart out, you know. So he’s holding the chart and he says, and then I look into the chart to see more about you, but the energy hit me in the face. So I went in the sideways and I looked that way. And then he says, I know this, that you were put on the earth to sing, put on the earth to do activism, put on the earth to, there was another one. He said, but the real reason you’re put on the earth is to dance.
Nicolle Wallace: Wow.
Joan Baez: And I love that. That’s when I’m happiest. Well, I think I really want to say, yoo-hoo, guys. Now I do this too and I get a chance to do that. I’m 80 fucking four years old. It was never too late.
Nicolle Wallace: I love that so much. I just, I’m sitting here thinking, how do I bottle her up? Like, how do we bottle you up?
Joan Baez: I don’t know. Come to the circus.
Nicolle Wallace: What is your advice for living an open life, right? Where you’re still open, you’re still asking the medium, you know, what does the chart say?
Joan Baez: Well, I don’t know how to live otherwise. You know, that I’ve always, sometimes to a fault, been open. I wonder how much of that I was trying to get people to understand me. But I couldn’t. I mean, for those first years, I was busy having stage fright and being political, and I couldn’t enjoy myself on stage. And then, little by little, as years went by, I had the appropriate therapy, I got more and more able to enjoy myself, to share the music and not worry about saving the world.
Nicolle Wallace: What do you remember most about sort of the most famous moments of your life? I mean, do you remember what the weather was like and what it smelled like and what your day was like, the day that you sang, I think it’s August of 1963?
Joan Baez: Yeah, it was very hot, and everybody said, oh, Marlon Brando’s here, and he has a cattle prod. I mean, it’s something nobody’s going to know about. So, I think I think about the other times that people don’t know about, you know, in Czechoslovakia, before the communists were overthrown. And I met one of the dissidents then, who ended up being president. And that moment to me, we were in a concert hall, national television was filming this whole thing. He was a dissident, wasn’t supposed to be there. We’d gotten him up in the balcony so the police would have a hard time getting there. They turned the cameras off, and they turned the sound off. So, I was stuck there, and I sang “Swing Low,” which is a, you know, a cappella to him. And then within the next few months, the communists had fallen in a nonviolent revolution. And I was credited with being the last drop, you know, in that chalice before the revolution.
That to me is one of the highlights of my life that people don’t know as much about, because mostly they see me in Dr. King, which was wonderful being with him.
Nicolle Wallace: So, did you know in the moment that you’re singing that, that you could be that, what you’ve become to history, to that country’s history?
Joan Baez: You mean like Czechoslovakia in August? I think I was pretty young, really, comparatively speaking. And I think you can kind of tell when something is going to be historic, you know, like that march that day, or flying over Woodstock and looking down, thinking, oh, my God, it’s not an anthill. Those are people. Things like that.
But one’s own importance is hard to judge and better not to think about. You know, just do what you do to the best of your ability, and try, you know, as a star, try to avoid the pitfalls of that. Try to, when somebody comes and talks to you, realize how important it is for them to tell their story. Although I had a great t-shirt somebody gave me saying, “Please don’t tell me your story.”
Nicolle Wallace: That’s amazing.
Joan Baez: I said, oh, man, that’s great. And he proceeded to tell me a story about how he got the t-shirt.
Nicolle Wallace: When you’re asked, though, to come and lift up a protest now, like No Kings or May Day or others, is that a burden, or do you feel like there’s something you can pass along to help the activist movements today? Like, how do you carry that when people so desperately want you to be part of this movement now?
Joan Baez: Well, sometimes I just show up.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Joan Baez: Because I know that that is heartening to them. I mean, I hear it when they’re passing each person, it seems, above a certain age, that it has meant something to them. And for that, I’ll just be there.
And we had a wonderful one that went 17 miles along, not a highway, but close to a highway. And it’s magnificent when that’s there and that’s happening and is part of what needs to happen.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, to your point of showing up and not knowing what the drop will be, I’m not someone who thinks that none of it matters in this moment. I feel like it all matters. Everything matters.
Joan Baez: I agree with you.
Nicolle Wallace: Because you don’t know.
Joan Baez: I absolutely, yeah, I totally agree with that, that it all matters. I’m not there visually the way I have been in the past. No, I’m at the circus, maybe one of the marches going on, I’ll take the circus. But yeah, when I come home, so I’m pretty cranked up after two nights of performances, then there’s this time. And I look at my roses and I force myself to roses level and do the things around the house to keep me there. And I’m learning how to do nothing, which I worked on for 80 years. It’s hard for me because I’m on output all the time.
Nicolle Wallace: I can’t picture it. What does doing nothing look like?
Joan Baez: Well, let’s see. A couple of days ago, I sat on a couch and I read some “Atlantic.”
Nicolle Wallace: Good. I love them.
Joan Baez: Yeah. And I didn’t go in the art studio and I didn’t start writing poetry. Those are the big ones because those are where I go immediately. So yeah, and I have a pool, more important, I have a creek and it’s just my life down there. It’s barely walkable. I’m going to get fucking ski poles, which I hate. They look like some ancient bird washer. So I’m going down the creek with these things, slipping and sliding on the rocks. But the creek, it totally revives me. It’s like a little baptism every time I go and I incense, I light so much incense they can smell it miles down the creek just trying to revive and there are a couple of places still, they’re high enough and it’s coming strongly enough that I can just do a little breaststroke and it’s important.
Nicolle Wallace: Do you feel like you’re in the, I don’t give a fuck what anybody thinks about me years of your life?
Joan Baez: Yeah, that’s the luxury of this being my age and I don’t care.
Nicolle Wallace: I just watched the documentary about “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Netflix and of course knew who Ed Sullivan was, but I didn’t know about how personally involved he was in bringing all the acts that he saw and loved in Harlem to the airwaves of CBS and fighting for them. If anyone tried to censor them or boycott him. I think a lot about the privilege and the responsibility of having a platform, albeit just in news. What is the importance of taking risks if you can and if you believe?
Joan Baez: In all my whatever career, I’ve said that social change cannot happen until somebody is willing to take a risk. And I believe that. And I believe it’s going to get scarier and scarier to take a risk. Those are things I have to figure out about risk because I’ve always been willing to take it. Does my taking a risk affect my son, my granddaughter and so on? I would love to say, damn the torpedoes, I’ll do whatever I want to do. And it’s very stifling to me to not be able to just say that because that’s where my heart is.
Nicolle Wallace: Are you optimistic in this moment that enough people will at least stand together and find community and be glue for each other for whatever comes to pass?
Joan Baez: I think that gluing and finding each other is really, really important. And I also adhere to that. We may not be able to turn the tide, but we can save some fishes to get involved in those organizations and groups that are busy saving fishes. Whatever the group is, back it up. I’m not going to say, I mean, back in the day, I would say to students, college students, yeah, quit, go get involved in real life and I think it was right to say back then. And now it’s a little scary.
Nicolle Wallace: But we can save the fish.
Joan Baez: We can save the fish. A bunch of them.
Nicolle Wallace: Joan Baez, it’s a privilege and an honor to get to talk to you. Thank you so much.
Joan Baez: It’s my privilege. Thanks, Nicole.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you so much for listening to “The Best People.” Be sure to subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts to get this and other MSNBC podcasts ad-free. As a subscriber, you get early access and exclusive bonus content.
All episodes of the podcast are also available on YouTube. Visit msnbc.com/thebestpeople to watch. This episode of “The Best People” was produced by Frannie Kelley, Vicki Vergolina, and senior producer Lisa Ferri, with production support from Delia Hayes and Anne Gimbel. Our audio engineer is Bob Mallory, and Bryson Barnes is the head of audio production. Pat Burkey is the senior executive producer of “Deadline: White House” Brad Gold is the executive producer of content strategy. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of audio. And Madeline Herringer is the senior VP in charge of audio, digital, and long form. Search for “The Best People” wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to follow the series.