MAEVE: Hey there. This is Juana's stepdaughter, Maeve (ph). This week on the show, Etsy sellers go on strike and the creators of the new TV series "Roar." All right. Let's start the show.
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JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
You're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Juana Summers. Happy weekend, y'all. So normally I cover politics, race and justice for NPR's Washington Desk. But for the next couple of weeks, I'm changing it up, and I'm going to be here with you. And this week on the show, I want to talk about something that I love to do but that my wallet does not always love, and that's shopping.
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SUMMERS: Even before the pandemic, I was never much of an in-person shopper. I much prefer casually scrolling through my phone, looking at stuff from my favorite stores in my house, in my sweatpants, probably with a cold drink in hand, putting things in that online cart. And when I can, I try to prioritize buying things from small sellers and from businesses run by people of color or from marginalized genders.
CHARITY SCOTT: You know, you kind of remind me a little bit of myself. I definitely am a person who loves to throw things into a cart until I reach the free shipping threshold, and then I'll check out.
SUMMERS: That is Charity Scott. She's a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where she covers online shopping and secondhand marketplaces.
SCOTT: I feel like I'm one of those super online shoppers (laughter). Like, I'm very online, and I buy everything online. So it really felt like just kind of a natural extension of my interest.
SUMMERS: I didn't call up Charity just to talk about her shopping habits. This week, thousands of people who sell their goods on Etsy went on strike. Etsy, of course, is known as a place to buy handmade custom and vintage goods, and some of its sellers are now pushing back against fee increases and other changes that the company says it needs to make to compete for shoppers in a crowded online marketplace. To understand a little bit more about what's going on with Etsy now, we started at the beginning.
SCOTT: Etsy, you know, really started out as this really kind of niche platform for consumers who are looking for something very specific, handcrafted or vintage products, which on Etsy means the product has to be at least 20 years old. The company has really pushed that, you know, shopping on Etsy is a way to support local small businesses. And I think, especially in the early days but even now, that has been one of the platform's biggest attractors to people who make Etsy a regular destination. When you think about, like, what online shopping looks like for most of us, there aren't that many opportunities to feel like you're supporting the little guy. So I...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
SCOTT: ...Think that really has differentiated the company from the very beginning.
SUMMERS: I know for me, when I've shopped on Etsy in the past and I think about the reasons why I've made those decisions, part of it is you're buying into a story, right? You're buying something that is integral to a seller or a small business's identity. There's this feeling of intimacy. It's a little different than a lot of other online marketplaces that I know, at least myself, that I've shopped on.
SCOTT: It's very different. And I think that seller-buyer interaction is really encouraged by the platform, and it's something that sellers really lean into. If you read through a listing, you know, there tends to be little extra details and information. When you reach out to sellers, they are generally very responsive and friendly and offering lots of information. When you buy something from Etsy, there tend to be a little extra tidbits and goodies in the package.
SUMMERS: Yeah.
SCOTT: So it is very much a small-business experience, but Etsy itself has grown into, you know, this really sizable platform.
SUMMERS: And right now - right? - this company is sort of at a little bit of an inflection point. There's a lot of tension between the sellers, the small businesses that sell goods on Etsy, and the executives that are running the business. Many sellers have gone on strike. What are you hearing from them about that strike and why it's happening?
SCOTT: Well, I think the important thing to know is kind of what kicked off the strike, and that was the fact that Etsy decided to raise its transaction fee from 5% to 6 1/2%. And that really made a lot of people angry. But I think that comes as the latest in a long line of changes that the company has made to the platform that...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
SCOTT: ...People have found upsetting. So it's more like a the-straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back kind of a situation than it is that people are responding to just the fee alone in a vacuum.
SUMMERS: Yeah, because it sounds to me when you hear from 5% to 6 1/2%, I think for most people, they say that's not a big change. Have you heard anything from sellers about kind of why this was the straw that broke the camel's back, why this may be what got us to this very public point of tension?
SCOTT: Yeah. And I think, you know, obviously different sellers feel differently about how impactful the fee is in and of itself. I've talked to sellers who say that - who acknowledge that Etsy's fees will be lower for them, even after the increase, than other competitors like Amazon or eBay. But for a lot of these sellers, the fee is being sold to them as a way for Etsy to make improvements to their selling experience. And they're not really trying to hear that when they've been dealing with issues from Etsy that they don't really feel have been addressed adequately. So Etsy kind of coming to them after having two years of massive growth, really kind of amazing results, and saying, hey, we need more money for you all so that we can make these improvements that we've been promising, you know, sellers - they aren't really trying to hear that, right? So that's kind of causing tension between the platform and the seller base that it's, you know, entirely reliant on.
SUMMERS: Can we talk a little bit about the last two years? - because for me at least, it's hard to think about online shopping without thinking about just how much it changed during the pandemic. And I know for me at least, I think the last thing I bought on Etsy was at the very beginning of the pandemic, where, like everybody, I was looking for masks, and I got online and I bought them on Etsy because I couldn't find them anywhere else.
SCOTT: Yeah. It's like you and everybody else, right? Like, the mask thing really kicked things off for Etsy. There was just kind of an overnight explosion. I think CEO Josh Silverman has kind of talked about waking up one morning and seeing that the number of sales that Etsy was doing had literally doubled overnight, and it just kind of kept exploding from there. And that was really the start of Etsy's kind of pandemic-fueled success. And what masks started, home decor and furnishings really fueled and pushed further. So for those of us who are - either who have been working from home or just generally trying to stay in the house as much as possible these past few years, you're looking around and you're seeing, hey, I'd like to change this, I'd like to change that, maybe a new pillow to brighten things up a little bit. And lots of companies have been benefiting from that push, and Etsy was one of them.
SUMMERS: Yeah. So Etsy's chief executive Josh Silverman spoke at The Wall Street Journal Job Summit. What did you hear from him about how he thinks about where Etsy fits into this big e-commerce marketplace and the direction that Etsy might be taking in the future?
SCOTT: Yeah. I mean, he's been really open about the fact that they're trying to compete with the big guys. They want to be the go-to destination for online shoppers. They want to be where people are starting their online shopping journeys; i.e., they want to be Amazon. They want to compete with Amazon, but they want to do that while trying to maintain what makes them unique, which is the fact that they're a platform exclusively for handmade and vintage products, which is a pretty tricky line to walk, you know. You can kind of see Amazon didn't get to be Amazon by relying solely on small, handmade items. But, you know, that is what they are attempting to do. And he said that in their earnings call, and he doubled down on that when he was interviewed at the Journal's Job Summit this week.
SUMMERS: You know, there are a couple of things there that I just want to tease out, right? The first one is this idea that a company like Etsy wants to rival a company like Amazon. And the reason that stuck out to me is because when I think of Etsy - and I think when a lot of people think of Etsy - they're thinking of artisan goods. They're thinking of small businesses. And I know there have also been complaints about mass producers on Etsy that are in violation of the terms of services. How do you kind of square those things? How does he square those things?
SCOTT: Yeah. I mean, I think it's a really good question because that's kind of a tough thing to do. Etsy previously has seen an explosion in their active seller base, and there are accusations from long-time sellers on the platform that many of those people are reselling and that they're selling, you know, mass-produced goods that you can find on lots of other places. And, you know, to some extent, the company has acknowledged that. They are spending lots of money investing in artificial intelligence and building up a team of agents that can kind of remove those bad listings from the platform. But when you think about scaling, you know, if you're a one-person shop making handmade goods, there's a limit to how much you can produce. And so that's a little bit more difficult to scale, right? Factories exist for a reason. So seeing how they get there is going to be tricky. And they really do have to walk that line because why would you go to Etsy if they're selling the same things that everyone else is selling?
SUMMERS: Do you have a sense of to what degree Etsy is listening to its sellers? Obviously, some have taken the step of striking. Others have been very public about changes with the platform that they do not agree with. Do you have a sense of if Etsy is listening at all?
SCOTT: Yeah. So what Josh has said is that Etsy has basically listening channels. They are taking regular surveys to kind of check the temperature of the sellers. But when you talk to sellers, you hear a very different story. And many of the striking sellers, part of what is frustrating them is that they feel like they don't have enough of a say in this company that means so much to them. And, you know, I talked to a seller who was like, you know, we want to see a seller representative on the board of directors. We want to see sellers empowered from within the company. We want sellers in the room when these decisions are being made. Now, that's a far cry from sending out regular surveys to get feedback. So when you think about what it is that protesting sellers might want and what it is that the company has thus far offered, you can see there is a pretty big gap there. And, you know, unclear if Etsy feels pressured to kind of try to find a way to bridge that gap at some point in the future.
SUMMERS: I want to zoom out a little bit and talk about the landscape of online shopping and online consumption right now. This pandemic is far from over. I don't want to suggest that it is, but many people are out in these streets a little bit more.
SCOTT: (Laughter).
SUMMERS: People are going out to brunch and walking around their neighborhoods. There are a lot more crowded local bookstores and, like, little tchotchke shops and things like that. In this kind of new year, what are you looking for in terms - and what are you watching in terms of online consumerism? Are people moving away from, as you and I do, shopping mostly online?
SCOTT: Yeah. I mean, people are outside, you know? In...
SUMMERS: (Laughter).
SCOTT: I'm in Queens, and the weather is getting nicer. And...
SUMMERS: We were in the 80s today.
SCOTT: ...It's been - (laughter) yes. It's been a long two years, and people are ready to be out and about. And we're seeing that reflected in the numbers. You know, e-commerce upward trend line is still going up, generally. Like, e-commerce is still growing, but the trend line looks a lot more similar to what it looked like pre-pandemic than what it looked like during the kind of boom years of the pandemic. Online shopping is not going to replace physical shopping any time soon. You know, we've been doing it the old-fashioned way for a really long time, and it has lots of appeal. And there are things about it that online shopping just really can't replace.
SUMMERS: All right. We're going to have to keep reading your reporting to find out. Charity Scott covers online shopping and secondhand marketplaces for The Wall Street Journal. Thanks so much for talking to us today.
SCOTT: Yeah. Thanks for having me. This was fun.
SUMMERS: Coming up, the TV series "GLOW," about a women's wrestling show in the '80s, is no more. But "GLOW's" creators are back with the anthology series "Roar."
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SUMMERS: One of my favorite shows that came out in the last few years was a show called "GLOW," as in the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. It was set in the '80s and inspired by a real-life women's wrestling show that was on TV. I loved the show because it was beautiful and athletic and funny, but it also offered some really heartfelt social commentary. But "GLOW" was canceled back in 2020. And I just want to be clear here that I absolutely hate that I'm never going to know what would have happened to the women in the show's fourth season. It actually still really grates at me. But I just found out that the creators behind "GLOW," Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, are back, and they've got a new show. It is an anthology series called "Roar."
LIZ FLAHIVE: It is a series of - we call them feminist fables. It's based on a book of short stories by this Irish writer, Cecelia Ahern.
SUMMERS: That's Liz. She and Carly joined me for this next segment. And each episode of their new show focuses on a woman getting into a not necessarily realistic but often relatable situation. In one episode, a woman enters a toxic relationship with a duck.
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MERRITT WEVER: (As Elisa) What do you want, filet mignon?
JUSTIN KIRK: (As Larry the Duck) Sure. You got some?
WEVER: (As Elisa) What?
KIRK: (As Larry the Duck) I'll take medium rare. That's a joke. Ducks don't eat steak. We don't love crusty bagels either, just FYI.
SUMMERS: In another, a different woman is addicted to eating photographs.
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SIMON BAKER: (As Adam) There's a lot of photos missing.
NICOLE KIDMAN: (As Robin) I ate them.
BAKER: (As Adam) What?
KIDMAN: (As Robin) I ate them. I couldn't help myself.
SUMMERS: In yet another episode, a wife has to sit on a shelf.
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BETTY GILPIN: (As Amelia) Is it for your golf trophies or for books that I haven't seen?
(LAUGHTER)
DANIEL DAE KIM: (As Harry) No, it's for you.
SUMMERS: Now, I am aware that on the surface, all of this might sound a little weird, but stick with me for a second. Underneath the surface, each episode challenges the way that our society treats women and their place in the culture by taking the audience on a journey. All right, listeners, and I want to give you a heads up here that we do talk about sex in this segment. Here's Carly and Liz.
CARLY MENSCH: So these are eight different provocations where we're trying to make you think about a lot of different things through different experiences. And certain episodes will leave you maybe more uncomfortable than others. But we worked really hard not to kind of reduce it to something pat, where you were kind of just watching an episode - a series of, like, wow, in each story, the woman triumphs, and empowerment is the name of the game, even though I think, collectively, there is an empowerment in the whole of it.
SUMMERS: Yeah. I want to ask you about the first story, which is focused around this woman, Wanda, who is played by Issa Rae. And at the beginning of it, we see her arrive in LA for the first time, and she's on a trip to discuss this movie adaptation of her memoir. And I loved the scene early on where Blake, an assistant, picks her up from the airport. And they're kind of vibing, but they've never met before.
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ISSA RAE: (As Wanda Shepard) Can I tell you something?
GRIFFIN MATTHEWS: (As Blake) Hmm?
RAE: (As Wanda Shepard) I didn't know you were Black.
SUMMERS: Blake kind of looks at her and is like, oh, I know.
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MATTHEWS: (As Blake) Because of - yes, I know.
RAE: (As Wanda Shepard, laughter).
MATTHEWS: (As Blake) I know. Blake gives off some serious colonizer vibes.
SUMMERS: And that was just, like, this very intimate conversation between two Black people that is certainly one that I have had before. I've literally had someone tell me that they did not realize that I was Black when they were talking to me before meeting me in person, but that's not a conversation that a lot of white people have had or been privy to. I would love to know how that story came together.
FLAHIVE: Yeah.
MENSCH: Yeah, I mean, these two white ladies did not write that line.
FLAHIVE: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
FLAHIVE: For sure. That was written by our friend and writer Janine Nabers, who's a spectacular playwright-turned-TV-writer that we've known for a long time, and we hired some writers that we loved to contribute to the anthology. We gave each writer the book of short stories and asked them to tell us which stories they responded to.
MENSCH: And "The Woman Who Disappeared" is one of the first ones she responded to, but there was a full evolution where the short story in the book is actually about an aging academic who disappears. And it was a statement about aging and about how the older you get in society, you - no one sees you. And she brought a lot of really big ideas to it, starting with - just it felt like it was a story about Black women in general. And then kind of as we honed in on it and talked more and more both about what the metaphor is like, and just Janine kept bringing, like, amazing anecdotes and stories that were kind of refracting on a theme. Some were just kind of random anecdotes she didn't know where to put in her art. And that's when we started getting a bit more narrow about this idea of - it became less about aging and more about kind of the commodification of Black art in the wake of Black Lives Matter.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Imagine if people could actually walk a day in your shoes as you, a Black woman. It is an extraordinary opportunity for empathy.
RAE: (As Wanda Shepard) Yeah, I hear you. But that's not how racism works.
MATTHEWS: (As Blake) Exactly. That's exactly...
SUMMERS: You mentioned that "The Woman Who Disappeared" is kind of a reimagining of one of the stories from the original book. And I'm curious if there's another example of a story that y'all kind of overhauled to make your own.
FLAHIVE: "The Woman Who Was Fed By A Duck" was 100% a huge reinvention from what's in the book. And another amazing example of handing a writer the book of short stories and having - Halley Feiffer came back to us and said that was a story she was interested in. And in the book, it really is just a conversation that a woman has with a duck on a lunch break while the duck is in a pond.
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KIRK: (As Larry the Duck) Whatcha reading?
WEVER: (As Elisa) An MCAT study book. It's to prepare for a test that you have to take.
KIRK: (As Larry the Duck) I know what the MCATs are. I'm a duck, not a dumb [expletive]. (Laughter).
FLAHIVE: And it was not something that Carly and I read and wanted to dramatize. And Halley was like, no, I really feel like that duck was a total [expletive]...
SUMMERS: (Laughter).
FLAHIVE: ...And really, really mansplainy (ph). And I just feel like there's something about that relationship, like, how just emotionally abusive and toxic it is that we should get into. And we were like, huh - we didn't see that at all. And we just kept digging all together, and then we built this story about a woman who gets into an emotionally abusive relationship with a duck.
SUMMERS: OK, can we just - I have to say I did not have a small reaction to that episode. I had a very large reaction to that episode.
FLAHIVE: Great.
SUMMERS: And I have I have to ask you about the duckgasm (ph).
FLAHIVE: Oh, yeah.
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KIRK: (As Larry the Duck) Well, I want to try something. And if it doesn't work, you never have to speak to me again, OK? But I need you to trust me, at least for the next hour.
WEVER: (As Elisa) Fine.
KIRK: (As Larry the Duck) Good. Take off your pants and lie down.
SUMMERS: That scene was shot so intimately between the sounds of the flapping wings, the moans. I'm not sure I can ever look at feathers the same way again or a ceiling fan. And I - it was incredible, and I was uncomfortable. And can you just talk about how that scene came together?
MENSCH: I mean, I like listening to you talk about the scene because it sounds like it did everything we wanted it to do. But we should talk to Liz, the director over here.
FLAHIVE: It was a very intense process. We first figured out that we really needed to shoot with real ducks. So, you know, we didn't want to do any CG. Or we thought we would really try to limit the CG as much as we could.
MENSCH: I think you're getting ahead of yourself, Liz. Before we decided we were just doing real ducks, there was a period of time where we were entertaining - should there be some feather wing puppetry?
FLAHIVE: Oh, yeah. Well, let's, back up further. Q Tran and I worked with a storyboard artist. We started there and had some really crazy conversations. We're literally - we were on Zoom with the storyboard artist. I was, like, lying on the floor with, like, my knees up being, like, and then I think the duck would walk up here, and then this would be some angle. So we had some really insane - how do we technically want to film this? We both had conversations about letting it be weird and impressionistic but not losing a real, intimate connection that felt, like, legitimately sexual between a woman and a duck. But, like, how could we walk up to a place of, like, manipulative female pleasure that didn't feel super gross, that just felt strange and weirdly romantic and would make you uncomfortable but also would feel visually beautiful?
MENSCH: And also, just for the metaphor of the episode, it should feel like he actually is able to give her something amazing so that we continue to understand why she stays and how he has now another tool in his arsenal to kind of manipulate her and keep her. So we had to be really specific to make sure the sex was good. But also there are limitations when it's no longer in the - yeah - when it's no longer on just a page.
SUMMERS: Yeah. So I want to - I mean, ducks do not talk. People - when people eat photographs, they do not take them into these strange and wonderful places. There are these kind of magical and otherworldly components in every single episode. And I guess I'm curious - That's a little different than "GLOW," which is the other way through which I know your work. Was that element freeing, or was it kind of hard to get into it? What - tell us about that.
MENSCH: I think it was both. I think it's what initially attracted us, which is we never want to repeat ourselves. We're always excited to learn new things, to try new things. So it was exciting to us. But then we also, approaching it both as amateurs and as kind of people who really feel comfortable writing grounded, emotional stories and feel a little, I would say, kind of itchy when stories start to feel not real, finding our way to do these genres that, you know, many have done before and very successfully. But I think we really wanted to make sure that we were - you know, as we're building our psychological horror, we wanted to make sure we weren't ever just kind of leaning on the traps of the genre to scare you but actually staying true to what's actually terrifying.
FLAHIVE: Yeah, I think they're, like, an emotional puzzle and a technical puzzle. You know, there's the technical aspect of, you know, sort of serving the magic trick without letting the magic trick kind of eat the episode in a way or, you know, take away from sort of the emotional reality of the character.
MENSCH: And to say we did this at...
FLAHIVE: Yeah.
MENSCH: I mean, for us, "GLOW" a lot of the early days of "GLOW" was Liz and I trying to figure out how to use wrestling and how to use that ring as its own kind of magical space that was...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
MENSCH: ...Never gratuitous, that was never kind of, like, decorative.
FLAHIVE: It always had to hold meaning and move the story forward or move a character forward.
SUMMERS: Yeah. You know, and both in "Roar" and in "GLOW," your work together has repeatedly centered women, a diverse group of women in some really unexpected ways. And I'd love to know more about why it is so important to both of you to keep selling stories that have women at their center.
MENSCH: It's funny that this is the most basic question...
FLAHIVE: Yeah.
MENSCH: ...And the one that stumps as being like, I don't know. There's not enough of them.
FLAHIVE: I mean, it just feels kind of, you know, as we're creating work, something that was really exciting about "GLOW" that didn't feel revolutionary to us until we got in there was just how many women we had in a frame at once, you know? Like, we would - we had a team of, like - what? - 14 women. And you realize how it's just not as often as you think that you actually see that many women in a frame together. And I think it was just something that we carried differently after making that show that we think about, I think about a lot just when I see, you know, big ensembles, and it's a bunch of men and, you know, one or two cool women still. You know, it's like there's still sort of an imbalance and a thing we're trying to kind of break.
MENSCH: Especially just where we're at in our lives, which is we both have young children and are trying to balance that with a career. I think we are living in a kind of female ambition coupled with the rigors and needs of other people around us, like small children. And kind of, I think our brains are living there for a lot right now, so it makes sense that it's coming out in our work.
SUMMERS: All right. Thank you to both of you. I really appreciate you being here and talking with me.
FLAHIVE: No, we're so happy to do it.
MENSCH: Thank you.
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SUMMERS: Thanks again to the creators of "Roar," Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch. "Roar" is out on Apple TV+ now.
MAEVE: Hi. I'm Juana's stepdaughter, Maeve. Now it's time to end the show as we always do. Every week, listeners share the best thing that's happened to them all week. We encourage folks to brag, and they do. Let's hear a few of those submissions.
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LAURA: Hi there, IT'S BEEN A MINUTE. This is Laura (ph) from Seattle, Wash. The best part of my week was a phone call from my son Will (ph). Ever since he was 3 years old, he's told me his goal is to grow up and fly the coolest planes in the world. He's studied hard, overcome injuries, given up lots of free time and other opportunities. This week, he climbed into the cockpit of an F-16 and took off into the blue sky. I am so happy for him.
DAVID: The best thing that happened to me this week was my doctor telling me that my brain hemorrhage was completely healed.
DEB: This is Deb from Columbus, Ohio. The best thing that happened to me this week is that I received a kidney transplant. It's been quite a process. I've waited for a year and a half, and I was able to remain hopeful all that time because so many generous people stepped forward as potential donors. In appreciation for their incredible generosity, I want to say their names - Karen, Tanya (ph), Beth, Michael (ph), Meg, Janna (ph), Paul, Jim, Kathy (ph), Diane, Phyllis and Patty (ph), who was ultimately my donor. I've sometimes in the past had the illusion that I was alone in the world, but experiencing this incredible generosity has changed me, I hope forever.
SUMMERS: Thanks to those listeners you heard there - Laura, David and Deb. Listeners, you can send your best thing to us anytime during the week. Just record yourself and send a voice memo to our new email address. Write this down. It is ibam@npr.org. That is I-B-A-M @npr.org.
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SUMMERS: All right, y'all. This week's episode was produced by Anjuli Sastry Krbechek, Andrea Gutierrez, Liam McBain, Chloee Weiner and Janet Woojeong Lee. Our intern is Aja Drain. Our editor is Acacia Squires. We had engineering help on this episode from Josh Newell. Our director of programming is Yolanda Sangweni. And our big boss is NPR's senior VP of programming, Anya Grundmann. So until next time, y'all, be good to yourselves and to each other. I'm Juana Summers, and we'll talk again soon.
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