Jonathan Menjivar

Jonathan Menjivar is a Senior Producer at Audacy’s Pineapple Street Studios who made the hit shows Project Unabom and The Clearing. Prior to Pineapple, Jonathan was a longtime Producer at the public radio show This American Life and also served as the show’s Music Supervisor. He was also a Producer at Fresh Air with Terry Gross and was maybe the last producer in America trained to cut tape with a razor blade. He is the creator of Classy. Follow Jonathan on Twitter here.

Describe Classy in ten words or less. 
Juicy, uncomfortable, moving, and fun stories about class.

Now you have a little more space to talk about it. Why did you want to make it?
I grew up working-class with immigrant parents who worked in factories and I’ve always quietly dealt with lots of class guilt/rage/feelings of inferiority and feelings of superiority and I wanted to find a way to air it out. It’s hard to make a show about that because so much of that is happening internally for people – there’s no real action or story. But I think all those twisted up feelings make us do really weird things and I thought maybe if there was a space to talk about it, the story and momentum would come. And it has – the stories in the show feel like we let a bunch of wind-up cars loose. There’s action and drama and humor. People are confessing things they’ve never told anyone before. I am confessing things. The really surprising thing has been how universal all these feelings are, no matter what your class background or current circumstances are. Every time I tell people the premise of the show, they start spitting out all their class hangups they’ve kept inside. That was a sign that there was something to mine. 

Can you tell us about the team you’re working with? They sound incredible.
They are! Our producer Kristen Torres came from Pineapple’s The 11th. She has a very similar background to mine and we speak a shared language and love of the swap meet. And a desire to tell stories about the lives of working-class people without being condescending. She’s an incredible producer who’s keeping me in check and bringing lots of weird humor and joy to the show. Our Associate Producer Marina Henke is rock solid and somehow manages to find every dream story or character I ask her to – even ones I’m certain probably don’t exist. Our Senior Managing Producer Asha Saluja is keeping us all on track in the kindest way possible and we definitely would be lost at sea without her. She’s also nailed the core tension or theme of a story in edits a whole bunch of times when none of us could see it. Our editor Haley Howle came to us from Pop-Up Magazine and has that enviable editor skill of being able to both do micro copy edits and also see how all these disparate stories we’re telling across episodes add up to a larger narrative across the season. She’s also very good at telling me, “Jonathan, this joke isn’t very funny.” I’ve worked with our Executive Editor Joel Lovell for years starting at This American Life and we have a way of working together where we can be honest with each other when something isn’t working and instead of getting discouraged, we just dive in and try to fix it. And my boss and Executive Producer Max Linksy, he really is that curious and insightful guy you know from Longform and 70 Over 70. We’ve also got an incredible engineering team in Marina Paiz, Pedro Alvira, Sharon Bardles, Jade Brooks, and Raj Makhija.

When did you first feel like a class straddler?
I think I probably didn’t notice it for real until I started working in public radio. I’d been exposed to privilege and wealth growing up, but most of my friends and neighbors were working-class too. A lot of people experience a giant class shift when they go to college, but I went to Cal State Fullerton – a commuter state school that’s full of working-class kids. It wasn’t until I started trying to work in radio that I saw how much I was going to have to learn and catch up. It happened pretty much at every stage of my career, beginning when I first started volunteering at KCRW in L.A. The very first story I made was for Transom.org and at one point on a reporting trip, the subject of the story turned to me and said, “Are you going to ask any questions?” I was so naive about how it worked, I thought scenes just unfolded in front of the microphone somehow. 

Did any podcasts inspire Classy?
When the first season of Articles of Interest came out, I was like, “Oh. You can make a limited run series out of a bunch of different stories that feel like they’re all connected somehow.” The way Anything For Selena mixed the personal with a larger story and ideas without ever feeling indulgent was definitely an inspiration. And you know, I’m also married to Hillary Frank, the OG indie producer who showed all of us how to make stories that are both raw and funny and give people space to say things they feel like they’ve never been allowed to say before. We were also thinking a lot about recent TV shows that treat class with nuance and humor – Reservation Dogs and Ramy and Somebody Somewhere were all on our mind.

You spent a lot of time behind the scenes in podcasting, what was surprising about becoming a host?
I’ve run shows with complicated narratives and lots of moving parts plenty of times before. But there really is a different kind of weight on a project when it’s your own thing. Particularly if you’re telling personal stories.

Fill in the blank: you will like Classy if you like ______. (Can be person, place, idea, movie, food, whatever.)
String cheese, chicarrones, boiled hot dogs, eating spinach from the can, mussels, in season vegetables, a delicate piece of fish, a $25 cocktail, and bacon bits.

What part of the podcast are you most excited for people to hear?
Something very real is happening in the conversation I had with Terry Gross. It doesn’t feel like a staged conversation for a podcast and I think it’s going to resonate with anyone who’s ever had a job with people who are different from them. So like everyone. I’ve been a Pulp fan for over 25 years, so getting to speak with Jarvis Cocker was an absolute dream. I expected him to be charming and funny, but I was delighted that he also seems like just a regular dude. And I was shocked by some of the stuff I found out in the last episode. Things that really opened my eyes and connected my family’s story to a very weird, very twisted early reality TV game show.

Is there anything we (the readers) can do to help this show succeed?
Share the show with your friends and tell them your own stories! We all just really want Classy to be a show that opens up conversations about class in people’s lives.

Thanks, Jonathan!