Bad with Money with Gaby Dunn is one of my favorite podcasts; I’ve listened to every episode, which I can’t say about any other shows. I followed Dunn’s comedy channel on YouTube before she started her podcast, and the show’s first season draws largely on her and her guests’ experiences with class transition and the showbiz industry in Hollywood. (For the second and third seasons, Dunn — an Emerson alum! — drew on her experience as an investigative reporter to look at wider issues through a social justice lens – like student debt, medical bills, campaign finance laws, our food system, and more.) As a podcaster and an interviewer, Dunn is frank and unfiltered, thoughtful and well-researched but spontaneous. She doesn’t shy away from exploring uncomfortable issues or revealing her own money woes. Also, as a formerly broke millennial, she’s super relatable to her audience.
One of my all-time favorite Bad with Money episodes aired as part of Season 1 in November 2016. In The New American Dream, Dunn interviews actor Stephanie Beatriz, who plays Rosa Diaz on Brooklyn 99, about Beatriz’s own experience with class transition and her immigrant experience (Beatriz immigrated to America from Argentina with her family at the age of 3). The episode was particularly timely due to the anti-immigrant rhetoric that has been around more or less constantly and overtly since the run-up to the 2016 election.
I’ve listened to plenty of audio interviews, for podcasts and other media, that were fairly awkward — it was obvious that the host and the guest didn’t have a great rapport. In contrast, I love Dunn’s interview of Beatriz because the two already knew each other before recording the show, which immediately makes the interview engaging and warm. Beatriz talks about growing up as a poor Latina immigrant in a wealthy Texas town and, later, how she made it in Hollywood after years of hard work as an actor. Dunn is great at drawing out these stories, and she knows which questions to ask since she’s also experienced a class transition – from what clothing brands Beatriz coveted as a poor middle schooler to what jobs she did to make ends meet before getting cast as Rosa.
Dunn always does a great job of assuming her listeners are starting from zero in terms of knowledge of whatever subject she’s covering – which is super helpful when it comes to concepts like subprime mortgages. In this interview, Dunn asks questions that walk the listener through Beatriz’s experience of working the regional theater circuit and then the process of making it in Hollywood, as well as the uncomfortable feelings and strange situations that come from suddenly going from being broke to actually having quite a bit of money — like Beatriz’s guilt over buying a nice piece of furniture for her new apartment, even though she could afford it. In this case, the match between interviewer and interviewee is flawless, and allows Beatriz to share her life experiences clearly and candidly.
Like most podcasts, you can find Bad With Money on iTunes (check it out here), Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts (I prefer Overcast); it’s well worth a listen. Enjoy!
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