Randa Abdel-Fattah

speaker

3,221 appearances 41 recordings 9 series first heard Jan 2025 last heard 8 Sep

Randa Abdel-Fattah’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 38 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 15.

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Throughline · American history through song · 7 Jul 2026 podcast

Here's Laura's conversation with the writer John McWhorter, the linguist and columnist for The New York Times.

Harold Arlen wrote the song Get Happy sometime in the fall of 1929, within weeks of the October stock market crash that launched the Great Depression.

It's such a hummable, optimistic tune in such a disastrous time.

And I'm imagining the comfort and energy that came with that song playing over the radio into America's kitchens and living rooms.

The phrase get happy comes from the black gospel music tradition.

It's a reference to receiving the Holy Spirit with that ecstatic singing that happens in a gospel church service.

When I think about Harold Arlen choosing that title for the song, it really makes me think about the origins of so much of our American music, which comes from those Negro spirituals and work songs that were an outlet for expression and to imagine a better life.

And I mean, the whole lyric of that song, it's really specifically about, you know, get ready for the judgment day.

It's kind of impersonating.

Speaking of time and place, in these hard times, there are choices that you have to make about the role that you take as, you know, a dancing mouse.

The role that you take in our society.

Do you want to chronicle the hardship and sort of interpret this moment?

And you do.

Or do you accept the job of being an entertainer?

And do you kind of try to move past your own feelings and try to make that thing that makes other people feel better?

Well, I mean, I think I wiggle around with it.

I mean, honestly, I think it depends on the day.

I'm thinking about one artist who's absolutely chosen to be a spokesperson for joy, and I think that his whole heart and soul is in it, and that's Jean-Baptiste.

And, you know, since he was a kid busking on the subways, his message is really come together, experience joy collectively, and the music is part of that.

He had a song in 2021 called We Are.

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